Wrestling: Damian Gomez making his presence felt

Updated: February 16, 2012 9:57PM

Brian Hrabovsky had heard the talk last summer just before classes started. A new kid had transferred into Bishop Noll, and he was an experienced wrestler. His name was Damian Gomez. And he was a junior.

For Hrabovsky, the Warriors coach, this was nothing new. Wrestlers come and go every year. Some have experience, some don’t. So, in the case of Gomez, Hrabovsky figured he’d better wait and see.

“I didn’t think much at first,” Hrabovsky said. “When he came in, we started looking at what he did last year. We saw that he was third at the sectional, lost in the regional and had an 18-7 record. We thought that was something we could work with.”

As it turns out, that was a bit of an understatement. With his performance at Saturday’s Merrillville Semistate, Gomez became the first Bishop Noll wrestler since Steve Chico in 2003 to advance to the individual state meet in Indianapolis.

Gomez came to the Warriors after attending school and wrestling his freshman and sophomore years at East Chicago Central.

“I’m really proud of him,” Hrabovsky said. “We started conditioning pretty much the first day of school back in August after he transferred in. He’s been there every day.”

Gomez had attended Catholic school through eighth grade. But when it came time for high school, he said it wasn’t possible financially for him to attend private school. So Gomez attended East Chicago before applying for scholarship aid entering this school year. He qualified and immediately enrolled at Bishop Noll.

“Now that (the state has) the scholarship program, I jumped on the opportunity,” Gomez said. “I took the exam, passed it by a lot and got the voucher. I’m happy to be back and getting a Catholic education.”

And now he’s happy to be making a trip downstate. Entering the semistate, Gomez had won a sectional title and placed third at the regional. In the quarterfinals of the semistate, Gomez knocked off Crown Point’s Dusty Schurg.

“I guess a lot of people considered it an upset when he beat Schurg,” Hrabovsky said. “We told Damian to just go out there and wrestle.”

Sure enough, Gomez won the match 5-3 to earn a place in Friday’s first round of the state meet at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, where he takes his 29-8 record to face Terre Haute South’s Tsali Lough (44-2).

“It feels like a dream come true,” Gomez said.

With Chico last advancing to the state meet at 119 pounds nearly a decade ago, Gomez hopes his trip downstate provides a shot in the arm to the Bishop Noll program.

“That’s what I’m really hoping for, that we get a lot more wrestlers to come out for the team,” Gomez said. “But the team we had this year, we were like family.”

Said Hrabovsky: “We still have team goals. Hopefully this will help build the program and help guys to understand what they can do if they work hard.”

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