In the hallway just outside of Dave Pacheco’s office are 15 pictures of former wrestlers who continued to compete after leaving City College.
For the team’s head coach, these pictures represent the program’s history and tradition.
“We look at it as we are a team and a family. We want our guys to go on,” Pacheco says.
Once again, expectations are high this season with a new crop of freshmen who have joined the team.
“We’re deeper talent pool-wise in almost every way,” Pacheco says. “We don’t just have one guy that’s good in each way, we’ve got two, sometimes three, really solid kids that could step in and be starters right now.”
City College placed second overall in its first tournament of the year, with nine wrestlers taking home individual medals. Four of Pacheco’s wrestlers made it to the finals, three of whom were freshman.
“That shows you some of them are on that upper level already,” Pacheco says.
Tyler Diamond, one of this year’s captains, took second in the 141-pound weight class in the first tournament and is ranked fifth in the state as a sophomore.
“I should have taken first. Last year I took first and got MVP. So I kind of downgraded,” says Diamond, the 19-year-old wrestler originally from Oroville.
However, Diamond is not dwelling on only placing second in the tournament, knowing it is only the first tournament in a long season.
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“This is all preparing me for it. State championship is where it is at,” Diamond says.
Like Diamond, Pacheco sees all the tournaments that lead up to the state championship as an opportunity to prepare and work on getting better.
“We took second this week, but that’s just this week. We’ve got 12 more weeks to catch up,” says Pacheco, who also expects the team to keep the common high expectation, winning the state championship. “You have anything less, why even go out there?”
Pacheco knows that although winning is nice, it is not always everything in life.
“Philosophically speaking, yes, we wanna win. Is it everything? No. If it was everything, then why go to school, why do anything?” Pacheco says.
Pacheco believes that it is essential for his wrestlers to balance their lives on both the wrestling mat and in the classroom. The wrestling department requires its athletes to submit grade checks to ensure success in the classroom.
“We’ve told them, hey, if we don’t get this (the required grade check) back on the day we told you, next tournament you don’t go,” says Pacheco.
According to Pacheco, City College boasts 50 percent more academic All-Americans than any other community college wrestling team in California. This fact, along with a historically strong wrestling program, has attracted wrestlers from all over to try out for City College.
Freshman wrestler Tyler Brown, originally from Calaveras, wanted to join the Panther squad for those reasons.
“I knew they were a good program, one of the powerhouses in the J.C. wrestling world,” says Brown. “You can’t just walk out there and be good at it. You have to work at it.”
