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High school football: Gophers wrestling commit Gavin Nelson is one of state’s top running backs

jace frederick, pioneer press
·5 min read

Everything about Gavin Nelson screams tough, physical and relentless.

The 210-pound senior is one of the top high school wrestling recruits in the nation. He’s built strong and sturdy — as can be said for most Simley High School wrestlers.

That sentiment holds up when you give him the ball on the football field, as well. Tackling the rugged running back is nearly as difficult as taking him down on the mat.

How would Spartans coach Chris Mensen describe him on the field?

“Bruising. Absolutely bruising,” he said. “He punishes defenses who try to tackle him one on one.”

When No. 32 totes the rock, the opposing defense is in for a long, difficult night.

“I always start out my first couple of handoffs thinking, ‘Let’s hit these guys as hard as I can,’ ” said Nelson, who also is an imposing linebacker. “Because if you hit someone hard — really hard — the first play, they’re going to remember it the rest of the game, and they’re going to play differently.”

Mensen saw that play out in Simley’s 35-7 victory over Robbinsdale Cooper last week. Cooper had tough, big kids. It didn’t matter.

“More often than not it took two, three guys to tackle him,” Mensen said.

So has been the story of the 2022 football season. Simley is 5-0 and ranked third in Class 4A heading into the Spartans’ game at Tartan at 11 a.m. Saturday. Nelson has led the charge. The senior has been Simley’s bell cow, running for 890 yards and 12 touchdowns on 104 carries.

He’s averaging 8.6 yards a carry, a number that suggests Nelson is more than just a five-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust ball carrier. Robbinsdale Cooper found that out the hard way last week, when Nelson bolted 68 yards for a touchdown, his most memorable run of the season to date.

That’s an evolution that has made the running back, who has committed to wrestle for the Gophers next year, truly unstoppable. Mensen poked fun at Nelson in recent years anytime he would be caught by the defense on a 15- or 20-yard carry. That’s not happening nearly as often this season.

While Nelson is still big and physical, he’s also explosive.

“He’s got that extra gear this year,” Mensen said. “He learned to jump cut, which is downright deadly. He’s not afraid to run over you, he runs through arm tackles, and when he gets into open space, good luck catching him. I think that’s been the difference.”

The improvements are the result, Nelson said, of his offseason work. He consistently was out on the turf doing drills with his teammates, while also working out individually and putting in work at the Training HAUS in Eagan.

“Doing things to make my breakaway speed better, jump cuts better, everything to make sure I could be better this year,” Nelson said.

It was wonderful cross training to continue to grow in both of his primary sports. Nelson talked about the similarities with trucking a potential tackler or, more prominently, bringing down an opposing ball carrier.

“Doing footwork drills, doing all that stuff, that’s all going to help me with wrestling, too, so I could get ready for the football season,” he said. “But also this will help me have faster feet in wrestling, this will help me be able to move guys more on my feet. So it all works together.”

Mensen watches Nelson wrestle and can easily identify moves Nelson uses on the mat that he also uses to rip past opposing offensive linemen. Wrestlers are excellent tacklers, Nelson noted. They also seem to be elite running backs.

Last season, Nelson split carries with Landin DuVal, a state place-winning wrestler in his own right. Going farther back, Jake Short stuffed the Simley record books as a running back and a four-time state champion wrestler.

Lakeville North’s Wade Sullivan comes to mind as a former wrestling state champion who currently is Minnesota-Duluth’s leading rusher this fall. Nelson has scoured this season’s list of the state’s leading rushers, and noted three of the top five are wrestlers.

“I think we’re all just so used to being hard-nosed guys and being in the wrestling room and working really hard,” he said. “We all train really hard, so going through a sport like football with really hard contact, a lot of these guys who play basketball and stuff like that, they’re not used to it. We’re so used to it, it’s a hard-nosed mentality that we’re used to.”

That’s why Mensen has zero reservations about relying on Nelson as much as possible if needed. The plan is generally for Nelson to get 15 to 20 carries in a game, but he ran the ball 25 times against Robbinsdale Cooper and could handle more work than that.

Simley wrestlers do not wear down.

“That’s something that I know (Simley wrestling coach Will Short) prides them on is they will go the whole match and then some,” Mensen said. “I watch that practice a lot, and it’s one of the toughest rooms I’ve ever seen.”

Nelson is a two-time individual wrestling state champion at Simley, with a bright future ahead in the sport. But Mensen, who played football for the Gophers, said Nelson could have played college football, too. The back, he said, is on par with guys he saw during his collegiate career.

He had Nelson go to a couple of summer football camps. Mensen said North Dakota State had interest in the back. But Nelson told Mensen, “Coach, I want to be a Gopher.”

“I’ve had so much success in wrestling growing up and stuff like that,” Nelson said. “I feel like it was kind of a no-brainer, just going into my strong suit.”

“I don’t blame him,” Mensen said.

But, for now, Nelson is having “so much fun” focusing on his final football season. He’s having a blast playing with his brothers and working to get better in pursuit of their goal to bring a state title to Simley.

“Every week we go higher and higher in the rankings, everyone sees how good we are,” Nelson said. “So I just know how realistic this season was for us to become state champs, and that’s the main reason I wanted to come out this year.”

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