Kevin Tao was shocked. Sitting in a corner in a closed-off tunnel under the bleachers at Wells Fargo Arena in Iowa, the wrestler mulled what had just happened.
“I didn’t really know what to think,” Tao said. “All I knew was, emotionally, I wanted something and I gave everything I had, and I was 100 percent certain before that everything I had was good enough. But it wasn’t.”
Moments before, the senior had come up only a few points short of earning All-America honors. But with the sound of the buzzer, his AU career was over.
“It makes me feel like I’m not done wrestling, which is tough because I’m in a sport where [NCAA championships are] usually the end of the road for most people,” Tao said.
Tao, who competes at 149 lbs., fell to Virginia Tech’s Nick Brascetta, 5-3, on March 22 in his wrestleback match as he tried to extend his Cinderella run as an unseeded wrestler at the NCAA Wrestling Championships.
However, after winning his first two matches and upsetting the No. 3 seed, he lost to Missouri’s Drake Houdashelt in extra time, 3-2, in the quarterfinals to force the wrestleback.
“There were a couple of things that I think attributed to [Kevin’s success in the tournament],” AU Wrestling Head Coach Teague Moore said. “First and foremost, Kevin prepared this whole season, physically and mentally, to perform at his best at NCAAs. This whole year was geared at his best when it mattered most.”
In addition to constant training and a demanding regimen of weightlifting and cardio workouts, Tao also had the proper rest to allow his body to recover.
“We have an extremely long season in wrestling,” Moore said, referring to his squad’s November to March schedule. “In the sport of wrestling, that can be very, very draining on the guys that compete so physically, we just wanted to make sure Kevin took care of himself throughout the season.”
A change In mentality
However, not all of his preparation was concentrated on the physical aspect of the sport. Tao benefited from something rarely used in collegiate athletics: a sports psychologist.
Starting last spring, Tao began meeting with Brian Levenson, a mental coach at the Center for Athletic Performance Enhancement (CAPE).
Moore has called on sports psychologists for more than a decade, and tried multiple doctors before turning to Levenson after arriving at AU.
“At championships you’re remembered for the last three days of your season, regardless of what you’ve done prior to,” Moore said. “Some athletes get overwhelmed because they know these three days in March are going to determine how people measure ‘my success’ or ‘my failure’ but our guys, we really don’t look at that [because of Levenson].”
Levenson, popular with AU’s wrestlers, immediately appealed to Tao because of the personal relationship he fostered in their sessions. Tao said he enjoyed having someone other than a coach to talk to and found Levenson’s one-on-one meeting style to be very effective. Levenson carried conversation well and formed an important bond of trust, Tao said.
“It was just a lot about knowing ourselves in terms of what we want from our competition every time we compete, what we expect out of ourselves,” Tao said. “The theme of all our conversations has always been controlling what you can control and not worrying about what you can’t control.”
Because of his improved ability to focus and set clear expectations, Tao’s performance on the mat improved. Instead of meeting with Levenson on a consistent basis, the sessions would go in waves where Tao went a month or two without seeing him, but would later have weekly meetings.
One of the most apparent impacts Levenson had on Tao was after the wrestler lost in AU’s last dual meet of the 2011-2012 season in February 2012. After falling to Bucknell’s Alex Pellicciotti, which Tao deemed “not acceptable,” he met with Levenson several times in preparation for the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association Championships.
Tao went on to a surprise second-place finish at the EIWA championship while qualifying for the NCAA Championships.
“He worked with me on all of the personal, daily things I needed to go through and the mental focuses that I needed to have in competition that I kind of lost sight of throughout the season,” Tao said. “Coming to terms with what I do best and what I want to do when I wrestle and honing on my best skills in wrestling instead of getting overextended, that was the biggest mental shift for me.”
Check out next week's Eagle for part 2
jpaunil@theeagleonline.com
