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Life After the Mat
by Matt Smith
08.08.11 - 12:01 am
Almost every high-level wrestler that
hits the mat in high school dreams of
one day stepping onto the Division I
stage in college.
Without professional ranks waiting for
them outside of graduation, competing
at the highest collegiate level is the
summit of a wrestler’s career, and a
goal that one Scotland High School graduate came to fulfill this summer.
For Laurinburg’s Alejandro Soto-Perez, the 2007 SHS graduate reached the
pinnacle of his sport three years ago, suiting up for the Spartans at the University
of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Soto-Perez wrote the final chapter of his collegiate career this spring, but his final
days with the Spartans came under a dark cloud, as UNCG closed its doors on the
wrestling program for the final time this March.
Despite the university turning its back on the 2010 Southern Conference
champions, Soto-Perez said that his four-year journey, which began at St.
Andrews, was an adventure he was proud to say he conquered.
“Being a part of a Division I wrestling program was probably one of the proudest
things I’ve ever accomplished in my life,” Soto-Perez said. “Most people can’t
compete at that level, but for me to reach that point was an amazing
accomplishment. It was an unreal feeling.
“I started wrestling late, but it was the only thing that really clicked for me,” he
said. “I’m not big enough to play football or basketball, but when I started
wrestling, it was something I thoroughly enjoyed. When other friends said, ‘Hey
let’s get together and play ball,’ I’m usually like, ‘Hey let’s get together and go
wrestle.’ That’s just how it is for me. At Scotland, we didn’t come from a
powerhouse, but we had a solid group of guys who were dedicated. My first year
wrestling, I received a scholarship from St. Andrews and had a great experience
there. I just had bigger dreams I wanted to realize, and that was wrestling at the
Division I level. I worked hard and did the best I could and got that opportunity
with the Spartans.”
Astonishing decision
Despite winning the So-Con conference title in 2010 and placing second in the
league in 2011, the Spartans’ athletic department announced that the wrestling
program would be shut down this March, a startling and unexpected blow to
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2. Soto-Perez and his teammates.
“The decision to cut the program just didn’t make sense from an athletic
standpoint,” Soto-Perez said. “We were one of the best teams on campus. We’ve
won conference titles, most recently in 2010. We finished second overall in 2009
and 2011. We’re near the top of the conference every year. We’re one of the
tougher teams at the university.
“We were told about two or three days before the start of the NCAA national
championships,” he said. “It broke our hearts; wrestling is something we’ve
poured our whole hearts into. It’s something I dedicated my life to. To most
people, their sport is just a sport. Wrestling isn’t a game; it’s a lifestyle. Wrestling
is so sacrificial, more than most people know. When they dropped that news, it
was heartbreaking.”
The red-shirt senior said the team was told that the cut was due to a lack of
funding, but the wrestling program takes up less than 3 percent of UNCG’s $11
million dollar annual athletic budget. With a $2 million dollar renovation project
completed for the UNCG baseball team’s field house in 2010, the decision to
abandon one of the school’s most successful programs was a shock.
“We were told it was due to budget cuts, but a lot of other things show
otherwise,” Soto-Perez said. “They just upgraded the baseball facility to the tune
of $2 million dollars. We were told that it came from boosters, but the way our
(athletics) boosters are run is that you can’t donate to just one team. Like, if I
make it big I can’t put a million dollars into wrestling; it goes to a (general)
athletic department fund for them to disperse. So we’re not sure why we couldn’t
receive anything.”
Soto-Perez said that the decision to end the program, which in 15 years earned
two conference championships and six runner-up finishes, would be far reaching.
“It affects both the younger and older guys,” he said. “The older guys, like me,
were faced with losing eligibility. I had a whole extra year of eligibility, but now
I’m a red-shirt senior, who’s going to pick me up? The younger guys that might
have sat out this year never even got the chance to experience it. Some of the
walk-ons may never get the chance. The guys that had scholarships had no
exposure this year and where are they going to go? It ruined the chance a lot of us
had to be Division I athletes.”
Moving on
Instead of worrying about where he would be suiting up this season, Soto-Perez
finished up his degree this summer, earning a bachelor’s degree in Criminology,
and plans to move to Washington, D.C., to start his career after wrestling.
Despite an abrupt end to a livelihood he worked so hard to jump-start, the
141-pound grappler said that nothing could compare to the feeling he had when
he took to the mat.
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3. “After college, there isn’t a professional rank for us,” he said. “It just goes to
show that we do this not for the money, but for the sport. We put everything on
the line knowing that there is nothing involved afterwards. Just having that
opportunity to compete at that level was awesome. I had the opportunity to
wrestle in prestigious tournaments like the Las Vegas Invite and the Southern
Scuffle, which shy of the national tournament, are two of the toughest
tournaments in the nation. I may have never been an All-American, but I’m proud
to say I competed at that level.”
Soto-Perez picked up six wins during the 2009-2010 season with the Spartans,
going 3-2 overall at the UNC Pembroke Open while also picking up a victory at
the N.C. State Open. He also finished 2-4 overall during his freshman season
with the Knights and spent a season training with the UNCP wrestling program
before joining UNCG.
The former All-SEC selection and state-qualifier said that his time at Scotland
was instrumental in preparing him for his chance to wrestling in college.
“Coach (Joel) McCanna is probably one of the biggest influences I’ve had in my
life,” Soto-Perez said. “He was at times a fiend, a coach and a father to me and a
lot of the other kids that wrestled at Scotland. A lot of times at a school, a lot of
kids come through your program, so you may lose sight of how many kids you
really touched, but he really changed my life. I don’t know if he knows it or not,
but he changed my life for the better. He instilled a lot of things into my life and
made me a goal-oriented person both on and off the mat.”
With his collegiate wrestling days now behind him, Soto-Perez will now have the
opportunity to adjust to a normal, everyday lifestyle, but for him, the sport will
always be in his blood.
“Wrestling is a difficult sport to understand,” he said. “You see each other break,
but you also see each other get back up. At the end of the day, we’re a family.
We’re always family.”
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