MAKING HIS MARC: Princeton University wrestler Marc-Anthony McGowan, left, battles a foe in action this season. Last month, McGowan ended his sophomore season with a stirring run at the NCAA Championships, taking second at 125 pounds. McGowan, who posted a 19-7 record this winter, becoming the 10th Princeton wrestler to reach an NCAA final. (Photo by Frank Jacobs III)
By Justin Feil
Marc-Anthony McGowan does not see his second-place finish at the NCAA Wrestling Championships last month as a Cinderella story.
The Tiger sophomore was seeded 10th at 125 pounds, but always felt like a title contender. He ended up placing second, earning his first All-America honors in his second trip to NCAAs in two years.
“This is actually where I’m meant to be,” said McGowan. “This isn’t just like a one-time fluke or an accident. This is gonna be the standard and this is gonna be the story going forward. Right now I’m relatively at the top of the weight class but that’s not temporary. I’m here to stay here.”
It would have been easy to overlook McGowan before his run to the championship match where he lost, 2-1, to No. 1 seed Luke Lilledahl of Penn State on March 21. But Princeton always believed it had something special in McGowan, who attended in-state wrestling power, Blair Academy.
“I always knew he had the ability and the talent to be a national champ,” said Princeton head coach Joe Dubuque. “And it was just the process of him knowing what type of wrestling is going to get him there. So I was pretty pleased with the progress he made towards the end of the year. And I think that was something, confidence-wise, he really took and really gained
from the last four weeks of the season.”
McGowan achieved a breakthrough in his NCAA run. He had lost six matches going into the event, and by his own admission, didn’t wrestle great at the Ivy League Tournament, although he repeated as 125-pound champion. The Ivies was a wake-up call that he had to flip his mentality.
“I couldn’t have gone that far wrestling like that,” said McGowan.
McGowan is a bit of a perfectionist, and there are times he’s overthought his matches. Dubuque encouraged him to go into the NCAA tournament thinking only positively. McGowan came out hungry, aggressive, and he delivered quite a statement by switching
his outlook.
“Show everybody that’s not who you are at all, and that you have so much more to offer,” said McGowan. “That was one of my techniques going in, that flipped mentality. Even though I feel like I had a poor performance at the Ivy League tournament, regardless of whether I won it or not, I thought performance was poor, but I do think it helped me that script mentally, which is what I needed.”
Make no mistake, McGowan was disappointed not to win the national title, but his performances on the mat were something to build on over the next two years. His run to the championship match began with him pinning No. 23 Nicolar Rivera of Wisconsin. It was McGowan’s first pin of the season. He followed with a 4-2 win over No. 7 Nick Provo of Stanford (coached by former Princeton head coach Chris Ayres). The win avenged an earlier loss to Provo, the first time he’s flipped the results on a wrestler in college and his first upset win of his college career. He stayed on target with an even bigger upset, taking down No. 2 Eddie Ventresca of Virginia Tech in the quarterfinals in sudden-victory, his first collegiate win in overtime. His final win of the season came in the semifinals as he avenged a loss from a year ago to No. 14 Jacob Moran of Indiana to reach the finals.
“A lot of these things were kind of firsts for me,” said McGowan. “I almost feel like I made kind of like breakthroughs you expect to see mid-season or to hit mid-season, but I had them here and I was honestly more proud of that at times than I was just the result
in general.”
McGowan became the 10th Princeton wrestler to reach an NCAA final. He was tied with Lilledahl in the third period when he received two stall calls while looking for a way to score. It gave the decisive point to Lilledahl.
“There was so much that was just so weird about it to me,” said McGowan. “Obviously I feel like determining a national championship off of a stall call just in itself, it’s kind of a weird concept to me. Do I believe I could have done and should have done more? Yes, but at the same time, it’s just a weird, weird match. And honestly, a little bit of a hard match for me to still process. I definitely would have loved to see me go after it a little more.”
McGowan had told himself repeatedly for each match of the NCAAs to be aggressive. He’s always been tough to score on — he’s only been taken down once ever — and he wanted to work at scoring a few more points himself. He approached each match with the mindset to earn points on takedowns before his opponent. Even though Lilledahl is one of the best counter-attacker wrestlers in the country, according to Dubuque, McGowan even took that same approach into the final.
“Right off the jump, I’m going to go start myself in the middle,” said McGowan. “And I did and it didn’t go my way, and I wish I had kept that mentality or at least told myself it a little more throughout the whole match. But it didn’t go my way and, we didn’t get that one done, but at least for the rest of my tournament, that’s what kind of pushed me to come out on top in a lot of those moments.”
At the end, however, McGowan couldn’t help but feeling bittersweet. The second-place finish to a 19-7 season was something plenty would be proud of. It was a big step forward from last year when he went 1-2 in the NCAAs and did not place. That disappointment stayed with him following his freshman year.
“It was hard because it was like I had the result I did and there was nothing
I could look forward to,” said McGowan. “I had to wait another six months just to get to our next preseason. And again, I just had that feeling of helplessness. And so I told myself, this tournament, regardless of the result, you have to stay with it.”
Now McGowan has a better performance and better result to show for his different outlook. His changes were validated by his run to the final, and the Tigers are looking forward to how he comes back next year.
“Just because you were a national finalist the year before does not guarantee you anything next year, and the national tournament shows that is not the case,” said Dubuque. “You can never rest on your past accomplishments. The only thing that your past accomplishments give you is it gives you the confidence and it gives the validation that you can get there.”
He knows that McGowan is not the sort of athlete to rest on his accomplishments. He drives himself hard all the time. He will have some downtime to undergo surgery for an injury that cost him part of the season, but then he plans to be back on course for another shot at a championship.
“It’s just consistency, keeping things rolling,” said McGowan.
“The biggest thing for me is making sure I can stay healthy, put a whole season together worth of training without injury or any major setbacks. I know what I’m capable of and I just want to continue to stay consistent with the training.”
The progress of McGowan is just one reason Princeton is optimistic about what it returns next year. He’s one of five Tigers who qualified for the NCAA tournament. Matthew Martino competed at 141, Eligh Rivera was at 149, Ty Whalen wrestled at 165 and Holden Garcia was at 174. Each of the quartet lost their first round bouts. Whalen won his first consolation match before getting eliminated in the wrestlebacks while the other three each lost their first consolation matches. The Tigers did not have the regular season that they had hoped for, but they represented the program well in the postseason.
“We got half of our lineup to the NCAA tournament,” said Dubuque. “We placed Top 20 as a team, which we’ve only done a few times in the last probably 30 years. And we’re only one of two Ivy League teams that have put guys in the national finals in the last 20 years. So, what we’re doing is working. I’m really, really excited for not only next year, but the future of Princeton wrestling. We’ll be returning a national finalist and six NCAA qualifiers if you count Kole Mulhauser, who had his season ended in January with a season-ending injury. So there’s a lot to be excited about not only for next year but just the future of Princeton wrestling.”