07/25/2026
With the end of Freestyle and Greco-Roman season, I want to take a moment to tell a story. Before you read it, I will promise you two things
1. This isn’t AI motivational slop.
2. If you like wrestling, or Merritt Island, or success stories, this is worth your time.
In the fall of 2022 we were gearing up for the high school season and recruiting freshmen out of the hallway. I’m not sure who it was, but a group of upperclassmen grabbed the smallest kid they could find and pulled him into practice. I put him on the scale and he was maybe 85 pounds. He was 20 pounds lighter than the lighter weight class. It took us a few more weeks to learn his name - David. He became our 3rd string 106lber. that year behind two other freshmen. I don’t recall him winning any matches that year (he claims he won 3), but he brought a big personality to the team and kept showing up.
That offseason David must have shown up to every club practice. Because he kept showing up, we took him with us everywhere we went. He was undersized and still lost almost every match. David qualified for Fargo at 94lbs. by virtue of being the only kid in his bracket at the National Qualifier. We got him to nationals and he went 0-2 in both styles.
When he came home, David was disappointed but motivated. He had seen that the wrestling world was bigger than Central Florida and he wanted a piece of it. He asked me if I thought he could ever make All-American by placing at Fargo. I told him he could, but that he would have to keep showing up and work incredibly hard. At that point, he had yet to even win a Varsity match and had a losing record on JV. Sure, it was possible, but at that point it was possible in much the same way as picking the winning Powerball numbers is possible.
The next year David made our varsity line-up. He won about 30 matches for us and looked like he might qualify for state. He fell short, but the growth that he showed as a wrestler from one year to the next was promising. When the offseason came, he was at every practice and event, but still lost a lot more than he won. He went 0-4 at the US Open, 0-4 at Fargo, and his only wins at National Duals came via forfeit. I remember him texting me from National Duals telling me he felt like he wasn’t any good and that he didn’t see the point of continuing to compete if he just kept losing. I told him to keep going.
After that summer, David had some edge to him. He had been optimistic and heart broken. The reality of chasing long term goals had set in. People tell you that success will come, but you want it to come soon, and on your terms. But that’s not the way the world works. You have to be willing to suffer and endure for what you want. This is why so many people give up, or worse, are too scared to ever go after anything in life.
His junior season went great. He had become one of the top kids in the state. Unfortunately in his biggest match of the season, he let the nerves get to him and lost his blood round match at regionals. The offseason was the same story. Small successes and failures. David has made a big jump, but it wasn’t the jump he wanted.
Coming into his senior season, David was one of the top kids in the state. He had a great fall and looked like he could beat anyone. But at practice the week before our first meet he injured his knee. No one knew what it was, but we knew it wasn’t good. He tried to push through it but he physically could not.
When he got the MRI, it was what we suspected - multiple torn ligaments. Doctors and trainers said he was done for the year. David disagreed. He showed up to practice every day. He couldn’t wrestle so he rode the bike or rowed. Every single day.
By miracle, David was able to get cleared for the postseason after not wrestling a single match all season. He wrestled at districts and made it to the region. As coaches, we were just happy to see him back on the mat. The next week at regionals he found himself in another stacked bracket but somehow made it out. For the first time in his career, David was a State Qualifier. That, in itself, would have been an awesome ending to this story, and as a coach, I thought that might be it. But David wasn’t done. At state, he knocked off a kid that teched him the week before and got on the podium.
When David blew his knee out in December, he was told his season was over and he might not even get cleared in time for Freestyle and Greco. Thankfully, “they” were wrong. It’s crazy how often that happens.
Freestyle and Greco-Season comes around and David is back on the mat working towards his goals. Some tournaments he’d look great, and others he’d look like someone that maybe needed to heal up.
At National Duals, he went 15-3 over both styles, losing only to the National Champ and by injury default when his knee was acting up. For the first time in his career, David looked like a guy that could get on the podium at nationals. Most importantly, he believed. The conversation shifted from “Coach, do you think I can place at Fargo?” to “Coach, I am bringing back some stop signs!”
David spent the next month training, attending workouts, getting his lifts in on his own, and even finding places to roll when traveling out of town. No one had to tell him what to do, he had been there before and knew what needed to be done to get what he wanted. A lot of the times we know what it takes to accomplish a goal, but instead of just doing it, we complain, make excuses for ourselves, and try to negotiate our goals down. But this sport, our goals, and podiums, don’t care about any of this stuff. We don’t get to decide what it is going to cost us. It takes what it takes.
Fargo came around and there was no more work left to do, just wrestling. David fought hard through his freestyle bracket and earned a spot in the quarterfinals. He was a match away from something he had spent years chasing after. After warming up on Day 3 of freestyle, he got the news that he was receiving a forfeit in the quarters and had advanced to the semifinals. David Serrano was officially a Fargo All-American. After years of drama and adversity, it was as about as anti-climactic as could be. But it still counts. David would wind up finishing 6th in the United States in Freestyle.
After Freestyle, David still had to wrestle Greco-Roman and that meant he had to make weight again. He was 8 pounds over. He begged me not to “make him wrestle.” I told him I wasn’t making him wrestle, but that I was going to make him follow through on what he set out to do. We came to Fargo to wrestle Freestyle and Greco and that’s what he was going to do. We went back and forth on it for a day, but thankfully we had a few other great coaches who were invested in David’s success on our Team Florida staff. They took him to a gym and David got the weight off, despite begging us not to make him do it. After weigh-ins, he was fine. “Coach, I’m going to get another stop sign.”
David’s Greco draw was tougher and in the quarters he fell to the #1 seed. This dropped him into the blood round against the #2 seed. The match was back and forth but he was clutch when it counted and won 6-6 on criteria. In his last tournament of his “high school career,” David had earned his second All-American honor of the week, and of his entire life. He won his next match and then another before dropping a battle on the big stage in the consolation final. David finished 4th in the country in Greco-Roman. I gave him a big hug. This was our last tournament together as coach and wrestler. He had accomplished what he set out to do years before.
David became the first Brevard County wrestler to place at Fargo in more than 20 years, and he did it in both styles.
There are several reasons why I am writing this:
First, I just want to give David props. He had a goal, it sounded crazy to a lot of people, there was a ton of adversity, but he accomplished it anyways. This deserves praise and recognition.
Second, there is a lot for others to learn from this - wrestlers, parents, coaches, anyone. A lot of the time when someone accomplishes something noteworthy, others sit back, say it is cool, but then come up with reasons why it was easier for that person, or how our own personal circumstances make it impossible for ourselves.
We make the excuse that they somehow had an easier path because they didn’t have to deal with the things that “we” have to deal with. Or maybe we convince ourselves that they were able to accomplish this great thing because of genetic gifts. “It just came easy to them - they didn’t have to go through what I go through.”
The truth is that EVERYONE faces adversity and that nothing worth doing EVER comes easy. Your hard might look different than someone else’s hard, but you have to be willing to push through whatever it is to accomplish whatever you are chasing.
Most kids and their families would have given up when they weighed 85 pounds and the lowest high school weight class was 106 pounds.
Most kids and families would have given up after getting stomped on JV that first year.
Most kids and families would not have committed themselves so wholeheartedly to a sport they just started.
Most kids and families never would have tried to make the National Team after only wrestling JV.
Most kids and families would have never gone back to a national tournament after going 0-4 and getting teched every time at their first one.
Most kids and families would have never committed to the goal of medaling at Fargo, before ever even winning a varsity match.
Most kids and families would not have found a way back on the mat after being told their season was over.
Most kids and families would have given up after setback after setback, after working so hard, but coming up short time after time.
Most kids and families never would have kept the faith and continued to work hard for something that seemed so out of reach.
Most kids and families never would have cut the weight and kept going after already accomplishing such a big goal.
And that is why most kids will never be All-Americans.
I’m not saying everyone that does these things will accomplish their goals or that anyone who fell short must have tried to take a shortcut - I’m saying that this is what it takes. This is the bare minimum to give yourself a chance at your goals. Try, fail, try, fail, try, fail…
I say “kids and families” for a reason too. Kids need people around them that aren’t going to let them give up. This doesn’t mean you have to be that parent that drives your kid everywhere or always has Gatorade for the team, those are incredibly helpful but I get why everyone’s family is not able to do that. Kids need family that are going to tell them to get back on the horse when they fall off. They need someone to keep reminding them to focus on the long term and not the short term. Kids are kids, and even some of the toughest kids will take the easy way out if you let them.
So while David’s story is remarkable, it certainly is a great success story that I will tell for years, everyone who has ever accomplished anything remarkable has undergone the same sort of path. Success is not a straight line. No matter how bad we wish it was. In order to succeed, you must also be willing to fail, time after time. You must be willing to suffer for your craft. To have your heart broken, get up again, and get back to work without losing faith in yourself and your focus on your mission.
And that is where most of us fall short. We want our goals to come easy, and when they don’t we pivot to something else, move on, and act like whatever we were chasing wasn’t important anyways. This is not just a wrestling problem, this is a life problem. It’s why we struggle in school, and jobs, and careers. It’s why we struggle with relationships, and friends, and marriages. It’s why we struggle with our self esteem, and confidence, and faith.
People give up on their hopes and dreams too easy. We just happen to see it a lot in wrestling too. I tell my kids all the time, wrestling IS NOT life, but wrestling is a tool that prepares us for life. Learning how to succeed in wrestling teaches us how to succeed in life.
And David’s story is something that we can all learn from.
“Do not grow weary of doing good, for in due time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” - Galatians 6:9
- Coach Smith
