By James “Buffalo” Saint Amour ’10
THE ROUNDUP

Varsity wrestler Tadeo Ruelas ’10 has been wrestling since the eighth grade when he fell in love with WWE style wrestling, and he wanted to try it out for himself.

One could say he was confused when he didn’t see this type of “show” wrestling when he stepped onto the mat.

At one point in his eighth grade season he asked his coach, “When are we gonna start hitting with chairs?”

His coach just told him to take another lap.

Wrestling is not what it looks like on WWE RAW; in the high school sport wrestlers must combine strength, brains and finesse in order to overcome their opponents.

Ruelas wrestles in the 130-pound weight class, a position that he has held since his junior year.

Before being 130, Ruelas wrestled in the 125-pound weight class, where he earned himself the nickname “The Shank.”

Ruelas’ record sits 20 wins to only four losses at the end of January.

Ruelas is one of the three varsity captains this year, a position he shares with fellow four year varsity wrestler Paul Looper ’10 and junior Kevin Molloy ’11.

“Tadeo is a very physical wrestler, he’s not too fast, not too strong, but is constantly putting pressure on you when you are wrestling him,” said his varsity co-captain Looper.

Ruelas has proved his mettle by pinning his counterpart from Hamilton, and out scoring his opponent from Corona del Sol, who was at the time ranked just behind Ruelas in third.

“As a teammate Tadeo won’t shy away to tell anyone if they are slacking off.

He gets all the underclassmen fired up,” Looper said.

Ruelas and Looper also meet up outside of regular practice times to get in extra workouts to stay at the top of their games.

In the state run Ruelas can match up with the best of them. Two of his four losses come from the top ranked wrestler in the state.

As the team inched closer to the state tournaments in late February, Ruelas was confident about the Broncos outcome.

“This year we are gonna have state champions,” he said.