PINNED BY JAKE
California's Varner wins Junior Schalles Award
Off the mat, Jake Varner isn’t a real assuming guy. He’s kind of quiet and soft-spoken.
On the mat, however, the Bakersfield (Calif.) standout is something completely different. He loves to dominate — and he loves to pin.
It’s a characteristic he shares with Wade Schalles, the namesake of W.I.N.’s Junior Schalles Award. And that’s why the two-time California state champion was selected for this award over other top high school pinners, including 160-pound C.J. Colace, who flattened 46 of 49 (94%) opponents for Franklin (Mass.) High School.
Varner’s performance this past year wasn’t just statistics, though they were impressive: 47-0 this season at 189 pounds with 43 pins (91%); a four-time state placewinner with a career record of 157-10, 132 of those wins ending with the referee slapping the mat.
It’s a
n attitude and one Varner credits his father, Steve, a standout wrestler himself at Bakersfield High, Bakersfield College and San Francisco State, with instilling in him from the time Jake first took the mat as a five-year-old.“Ever since I started wrestling, my dad taught me to go out there, pin the guy and get it over as fast as you can,” Jake Varner said. “So I like to go out there and pin guys as fast as I can. Some guys like to go out there and take people down and let them up, like it was practice. But that’s what practice is for. In matches, I like to go out and pin guys.
“In practice I’ll pin guys, but I’ll use practice more as working on takedowns, turns and stuff. In a match, I’ll go for the pin first. If I can’t get it right away, I may try to tilt a guy up and wait for another chance. If I do (pin him), I do. If not, I’ll just win on points.”
Varner, who in November became a key part of Iowa State’s top-ranked recruiting class, left California with a lasting impression of his ability to finish off an opponent. In his final state meet, March 4-5, at Bakersfield’s Centennial Garden and Convention Center, with his cousin and Drillers head coach, Andy Varner, in his corner, Jake Varner faced six opponents and pinned all six — in a cumulative time of 11 minutes, 49 seconds — to win his second state title.
In a way, amazingly, the six pins were a consolation prize.
“Coming into high school, I wanted to be a four-time state champion,” said Jake, whose former teammate, Darrell Vasquez, had been the first. It didn’t quite work out that way as Jake finished fourth at 140 pounds as a freshman and second at 152 as a sophomore.
Pin records, however, were on the horizon.
“My junior year, I wanted to pin everybody throughout the year and I think I pinned everybody except about seven guys,” Jake said. “I wanted to pin everybody at the state meet, but I only ended up pinning three. This year, I wanted to try to pin everybody, but that didn’t happen and then I wanted to pin everyone at the state meet. I knew that I had a real good chance of doing it, because I’d already wrestled the No. 2 guy in the state twice this year and pinned him twice.”
California’s state tournament is a 38-man bracket. Like the NCAAs, the state’s top wrestler has the same chance of being drawn into a pigtail match as anyone else in the field. Most wrestlers disdain the idea of a pigtail match, hoping to conserve their energy for later in the tournament.
Jake Varner’s reaction was the opposite.
“When I found out I had a pigtail (match) at the state meet, I was like, ‘Wow, if I pin everybody, that’s six matches and that’d be a record.’ I could score more team points,” he said. “Actually, the pigtail match gets you more prepared to get into the tournament; an extra match to warm you up. A lot of guys don’t like it, but I was pretty happy about it.”
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