The top three boys wrestlers in Kansas might all come from the same Wichita-area team
There are five regional championships and three state titles among them.
One of them was injured last year. One of them is only a junior. And none of them have even started the 2020 postseason.
Devin Gomez, Kyle Haas and Duwayne Villapando are arguably the top three pound-for-pound high school wrestlers in Kansas. And they all come from the same team — the Maize Eagles.
Maize has finished in the top five of Class 5A each of the past two years. Although the Eagles haven’t been able to break through Goddard’s five-year stranglehold on the classification, they have another shot in 2020, and it might be their best.
Haas is the defending 182-pound champion in 5A. He is undefeated this season and has two losses in his high school career. He is the No. 1 wrestler at 220 pounds, according to Kansas coaches, and second-best in the country, per InterMat.
He was No. 1 in The Eagle’s preseason top 25 wrestlers in the Wichita area. Gomez was second.
Gomez is the returning 145-pound champion in 5A. He finished last season 50-0 in his first season since transferring from Valley Center.
And Villalpando was ranked fifth in the preseason. His story in 2020 is perhaps most interesting, coming off a season-ending ACL injury before he even touched a mat last year.
Villalpando was verbally pledged to Nebraska but flipped to Missouri on Feb. 10. With Haas pledged to Oklahoma State and Gomez set to make his OSU visit after this season, they might be the only Division I-bound wrestling trio in Kansas.
“We call ourselves ‘The murderer’s row,’” Gomez said. “Those guys right there, you don’t want to mess with ‘em.”
Last season was a disappointment for the Eagles. Even with a pair of state champions in Haas and Gomez, Maize finished fourth in the Class 5A team standings and went home without a trophy after a runner-up finsh in 2018.
Gomez landed on The Eagle’s All-Metro team alongside senior Aidan Campbell, who now wrestles at Arkansas-Little Rock. When the Eagles got back into the wrestling room before this season, their leader was gone.
“Aidan was the jerk of the group, and I had to step up and take that role,” Gomez said. “One of my coaches came up to me and said, ‘Now that Aidan’s gone, we’re gonna need a new (jerk).’ But when it comes down to it, all of us keep each other accountable.”
With Gomez and Haas the two defending champions, Villalpando is the dark horse. If he was healthy last year, he likely would have become a two-time champion and earned an All-Metro honor.
He probably would have cracked the top three in The Eagle’s preseason top 25, too. His points might have even been enough for Maize to earn a third-place team trophy.
Villalpando went 47-3 as a sophomore and won the 152-pound title, beating a senior. He has wrestled at the junior national championships in Fargo, North Dakota, so he has the skill. He said he is ready to put it on display again.
“It was real tough to watch state last year,” Villalpando said. “It made me miss wrestling so much. You do something for so long and all of a sudden you can’t do it, it’s hard.
“I feel like people think I fell off a little bit.”
The trio lost four matches in its most recent seasons before 2019-20, and with Villalpando’s injury, that meant two of those seasons came as sophomores.
But with Gomez and Villapando as seniors to go along with state placers Junior Camacho and Carson Wheeler, 2020 is Maize’s best shot. It starts with those top three.
“I feel like we stack up 1, 2, 3 in the state,” Villalpando said. “That’s how it should be.”
This story was originally published February 20, 2020 at 2:10 PM.