By Mike Finn, W.I.N. Editor

Lennie Zalesky still remembers when Derek Moore walked into the UC Davis wrestling room as a scrawny 125-pounder.

Zalesky also saw someone that he could sculpture in to becoming the Aggies’ first All-American, much less the California school’s first national champion with a 17-2 technical fall over Northwestern’s Ryan Lang in the 141-pound championship match.

“There is a prototype and they fall into different categories,” said Zalesky, the brother of current Oregon State head coach Jim Zalesky. “Derek is the unorthodox hard-nosed type of kid who is going to frustrate a lot of wrestlers. After we saw him his freshman year, we thought he had (All-American potential).”

Coming out of Redding, Calif., where he finished fifth in the high school state tournament, Moore first made Zalesky say, “Wow,” when the Aggie finished third in the 2004 Las Vegas Invitational as a redshirt freshman.

Later that year, Moore missed All-American status by just one victory … and did the same thing as a sophomore.

Last year, Moore was forced to medical forfeit while leading his opponent in the wrestlebacks and has been hampered with injuries much of this season.

In fact, after winning his second straight Pac-10 championship, Moore entered the NCAAs with just 19 matches this year … all victories.

“It’s been a battle,” said Zalesky. “You have to give this guy a lot of credit. He had to find ways of staying in shape and stay mentally positive. He’s probably only been on the mat two weeks out of the last two months.”

“I worked hard and put a lot of trust in my coaches,” said Moore “Everyone thinks they have to go to Oklahoma State and Iowa, but we’ve got Oklahoma State and Iowa here in (assistant) coach (Mark) Munoz and Zalesky,” said Moore, who nearly followed former UC-Davis coach Mike Burch to Brown (where Burch is an assistant coach) before staying at Davis.

“It’s just hard work and doing what the coaches say. That’s all I’ve been doing the last five years. It’s gotten me here.”

“We have a lot of good wrestlers in California and a lot of them feel like they have to leave,” Zalesky said. “We hope to send them a message, look at Derek. He finished fifth in his state meet and qualified for the national championship undefeated his senior season and teched his guy in the finals.”

“It’s been kind of a big blur,” said Moore. “Every match has been kind of insane the whole week. With me not getting a lot of mat time the last couple of months, I’ve spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours, in the rehab room — I hate that thing. I don’t know if there’s anything special about what I’m doing.”

It should not be a surprise that Moore was named the Outstanding Wrestler after he dominated the Wildcat junior at the national tournament, considering Moore was the No. 2 seed coming into the event.

But he did fall behind Lang 2-0 and was ridden for at least 30 seconds in the first period.

“I think I got taken down right away because I wasn’t prepared for that,” said Moore. “He was really strong. I wasn’t expecting him to be that strong, plus he’s really tall. 

“He was able to dive in on my legs and pull them in really fast. I work a lot on scrambling and hooking and he was riding really deep with his arms so I was able to pull some funk around and get the reversal both times I was underneath him.”

But Moore quickly changed the momentum when he first scored a reversal to tie the score 2-2, then dominated the Wildcat by twice putting Lang on his back with a tilt in the first period and with a cradle in the third frame.

“It was maybe my wildest dreams,” said Moore, who as an ROTC student at Davis hopes to join the Army’s World Class Athlete Program after graduating this spring. 

“It’s just crazy being able to get on top of that guy and being able to turn him and turn him. At every point I was just building and building. It’s just insane being here.”

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