Streetsboro senior Donovan Paes puts passion into wrestling

With a lot of young student-athletes, getting them to commit to one practice a day might be tricky enough.

Not Donovan Paes.

When he was in middle school, the Streetsboro wrestler was doing his own version of two-a-days, going from middle school wrestling practice to the 216 wrestling club multiple days per week.

Why did he do it?

"I just wanted to be the best, that's it," Paes said. "My dad introduced the idea and I was all on-board."

Not that Paes wasn't human.

Sure, there were days when the middle school wrestler didn't want to do a two-a-day.

And that's when his dad, Derrick, would provide encouragement.

"My dad helped me with the way through it," Paes said. "Even when I didn't want to go to practice, he pushed me through it. He said, 'You got to go. You want to be the best, you got to beat the best.'"

Paes' schedule changed in high school, but not his work ethic.

In high school, he found himself working with Streetsboro's coaches after practices.

"The coaches there at Streetsboro, they all have a unique bond with everybody in the program and I think that's good," Paes said. "I think we need that and I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon."

Forming a unique bond with his coaches and with the sport of wrestling as a whole, the Record-Courier Athlete of the Week has emerged as one of Portage County's top wrestlers. Through three full seasons, Paes has made district three times, state twice and placed at the state tournament once.

This past weekend, Paes earned his third straight Portage County Tournament championship. He is also the top-ranked wrestler at 132 pounds in Division II, according to BoroFan.

"Donovan just normally stays in pretty good position," Rockets coach Josh Zupancic said. "He's going to come after you."

Heart, a recommendation lead Donovan Paes to wrestling

Many wrestlers start young because they grew up around the sport.

Paes started young as well, around the first grade, but not because he stems from a wrestling family. Nope, Paes comes from a football family — his dad played football at New Middletown Springfield and then Hiram College — and it was through football that he found the mat.

"One of the coaches that coached with my dad said that I would be a good wrestler because I got the heart in it or the aggression and stuff like that," Paes said. "So my dad took me up to wrestling practice, and I tried it out a couple times and my dad said, 'You like it?' I said, 'Yeah,' so I just kept doing it."

That heart, that aggression, is still one of Paes' best qualities.

When asked what stands out about the star senior wrestler, Zupancic doesn't talk about a specific move.

He talks about sheer competitiveness.

"He's just a tenacious wrestler, definitely a very competitive kid," Zupancic said. "I've had a couple of them. In a lot of ways, he reminds me of Hank Carey, who was a super competitive kid we had."

Per Zupancic, Paes will occasionally lose a battle for points, but he'll rarely get beat up on the mat. Usually, it's the other way around.

"I don't think the kids really want to wrestle him again," Zupancic said. "That always helps when kids don't want to step on the mat with you or [are] a little wary, too. You always have that extra mental edge."

Paes' toughness and competitiveness on the mat provide a sharp contrast with his laid-back nature off the mat.

"He's just a super, super nice kid," Zupancic said. "Super polite. He's one that all the teachers usually have nothing but compliments for."

How to explain his gentle nature off the mat and intensity on it?

"I guess there's just a switch that goes in my head," Paes said. "When I know my opponent, the switch goes on."

And when the switch goes off?

Well, when he's off the mat and out of school, he's likely on Lake Erie.

"I go up to Lake Erie like every weekend in the summer," Paes said. "We go fishing for walleye, we can go tubing, we can go jet skiing. I mean there's just so much to do out there. It's just always fun."

Fishing is a slightly different pace and physicality than wrestling.

But Paes loves the blue water of Lake Erie just as much as he loves the blue mats of Streetsboro.

Maybe even more.

"He's one of those kind of Portage County country types," Zupancic said. "He loves fishing, and that's his big thing. I think he might like fishing more than he likes wrestling."

Donovan Paes quickly found success in high school wrestling

Success was not a surprise with Paes.

Zupancic could see it before Paes even entered high school, with Paes taking fifth at the Ohio Athletic Committee state meet as an eighth-grader.

Oh sure, there were little bumps.

Like an injury that held him out for a good chunk of his freshman season.

And some nerves that Zupancic had about moving Paes from 113 pounds to 132 as a sophomore. But Paes quickly proved a natural at 132, earning a state berth his very first season in that weight class.

"Sometimes, you have kids that are lightweights and they move up and there's an adjustment period I guess is the easiest way to put it," Zupancic said. "Sometimes they just get hammered, even if they were good youth wrestlers, and that wasn't the case with Donovan."

The next year, Paes went even further.

As a junior, he earned his first district title, carrying an undefeated record into the state tournament, in which he placed seventh.

Placing at state surely made Paes happy.

"I was obviously happy that I placed," Paes said. "Last year, I had a goal to go six or higher, and, well, I got seventh, but I still placed in the state of Ohio, so I still felt good about it."

But if anything, it added to his drive for his senior season.

That drive was apparent Monday as the Rockets practiced following their runner-up finish at this past weekend's PCT.

Zupancic felt like Streetsboro should have won the title (instead Rootstown captured it by 5.5 points). Paes did, too, and so during Monday's workouts, the senior pushed his teammates to go a little harder.

"I could see the coach was getting frustrated because we had a little bit of talkative people today," Paes said. "I just said, 'Pick it up. We need to do better. We could have been champs at the PCT.'"

Paes' motivation runs deep.

Just as it did when he was attending two practices after middle school.

Perhaps it runs even deeper today.

"I think he knew how close he was last year," Zupancic said. "So that's definitely a motivator when you're so, so close and he definitely wrestled a lot in the spring and stuff like that. He did freestyle for the first time, he had never really done that, so I think he tried to get some extra stuff in to see if that makes a difference and we'll find out."

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Athlete of the Week | Streetsboro's Donovan Paes devoted to wrestling