Auburndale's Nate Gabriel is The Ledger's Boy's Wrestler of the Year
Life is good for Auburndale junior wrestler Nate Gabriel. But he isn’t resting until his dreams are accomplished.
With the season being over for a few weeks, right now he is throwing the discus on the track team while also preparing to be the best football player he can.
Still, he isn’t that far removed from accomplishing his goal of becoming a state wrestling champion thanks to a 10-0 major decision over Port Charlotte’s Vincent Chavez at the Silver Spurs Arena earlier in March, which is Gabriel’s first state championship in his high school career.
Gabriel is The Ledger’s Wrestler of the Year. And that feat means a lot to him, he said.
But he remembered what he had to go through to become a state champion, which meant a lot of sacrifices.
“(The hardest thing to do was) probably all the morning workouts (and) the workouts I had to do after practice, and the workouts I had to do after the workouts,” Gabriel said. “Going through all those practices and workouts was the hardest thing.”
More: Polk County's Tedesco, Fretwell, Whidden, Maldonado, Gabriel win state wrestling championships
Gabriel during his state championship year wasn’t a stranger to waking up at 5 a.m. every day, and lifting weights before heading to school. Then he would go to practice only to work out after that practice. Another workout would transpire following that workout.
“It’s hard. It took a toll on me,” Gabriel said.
But through that strenuous process, Gabriel received all the inspiration he needed thanks to head wrestling coach Antonio Thomas, and his brother, Luchen Gabriel, who constantly push the junior wrestler to the point of not having a choice but to get better.
“Coach Thomas and my brother taught me every single day about going harder, and you have to push yourself more,” Gabriel said.
Another person he learned from is Gable Steveson, who is a two-time Dan Hodge Trophy winter, a two-time NCAA Division I National Champion and a three-time Big Ten Conference Champion, and a three-time All-American out of the University of Minnesota.
Through studying Steveson, Gabriel learned the art of wrestling like a smaller wrestler as a heavyweight. He combined this technique and ramped up his workload to streamline the process of becoming the best of the best.
There is a reason Gabriel is doing all of this.
“My main goal of doing all of this is to get to college,” Gabriel said. “…Everybody else isn’t working as hard as me. Out all that hard work, I had to reward myself with the state championship.”
That kind of mindset doesn’t include resting on his laurels. Of course, the state champion needed to rest and go to sleep, but the process will start again the very next day to achieve another goal.
Gabriel is an exceptional football player and colleges have their eye on the multisport athlete. But he is using wrestling as a tool for discipline and to help him be that much of a factor in football.
Up next for Gabriel are the nationals in Fargo, North Dakota.
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Auburndale's Nate Gabriel is The Ledger's Boy's Wrestler of the Year
