Corona del Mar cowboy has opponents cowering

Rick Devereux

Jon Dean is easy to spot at a wrestling tournament.

The Corona del Mar High senior is the only one in the building

wearing a grey cowboy hat.

He is also usually the one with his hand raised at the end of the

match.

Dean, who wrestles in the 152-pound weight class for the Sea

Kings, finished third at the Troy invitational to earn Daily Pilot

Athlete of the Week honors.

“He’s gifted,” Corona del Mar Coach Gary Almquist said. “I taught

him a couple of [moves] and he picks it up really fast. But he also

has that bravado, and I love that.”

Dean also has a work ethic second to none.

He transformed himself into a wrestler after he was the

third-string freshman quarterback on the football team. Dean lifted

weights, attended camps and showed up before and after practices in

order to improve.

“I like wrestling because it’s a sport where how hard you work

directly reflects how good you get,” Dean said. “I stayed focused.

When everyone else was out on Friday nights, I was in the gym.”

His hard work has earned him the “Cowboy” nickname. He saw

wrestlers performing a move called leg riding and he put in extra

practice time to perfect the maneuver.

“In order to do leg rides you have to stay in the saddle,” Dean

said. “That’s kind of how it all started.”

Leg riding needs a particular type of mentality to succeed and

Dean has that type of mentality.

“He will produce pain and that is what wrestling is all about,”

Almquist said. “I’m not going to hurt you but I’m going to persuade

you to rest your shoulders down on the mat for the pin. Persuade is a

four-letter word called pain.”

In order to dish out pain, a leg rider must be able to absorb

pain, something Dean is not afraid of.

“I consider myself the toughest kid in California,” he said.

Tough is one thing, but a winning wrestler is another.

Dean has gotten better and better each year. He wrestled on the

second-day of the CIF Inland Division tournament and finished second

in the Pacific Coast League as a junior in the 140-pound weight class.

“CIF was tough last year,” Almquist said. “He made it to the

second day and lost a tough match. He has really dedicated himself

this year.”

One aspect that needed to be worked on was Dean’s attitude. His

ultra-competitive nature led to problems.

“I used to get angry at anything and started picking fights in the

wrestling room,” Dean said. “But I think I’ve just matured.”

Almquist helped the maturation process along.

“We had a heart-to-heart in September,” the coach said. “He has

probably made the biggest transformation on the team as far as

somebody changing for the better. Jon is making the right choices and

learning how to channel anger the right way.”

Instead of taking it out on teammates or coaches, Dean takes his

anger out on his opponents.

Dean won the district championship in December and was fifth in

the Estancia tournament in January.

He went 3-1 in the Troy invitational for the third-place finish.

He beat his first opponent 8-2, his second opponent -- the fourth

seeded wrestler from Troy -- 6-2 but lost by one point to the No. 1

seeded wrestler from Laguna Hills. Dean pinned his Santa Margarita

opponent in the third-place match.

Dean leads CdM with 24 wins. The school record for wins is 34, set

by current assistant coach Steve Shipman in 2002. There is a board in

wrestling room that has the current team’s individual records and

also the school’s all-time records, so Dean has a visual goal to

knock Shipman’s name off the record books.

“[The team] wants him to make 35 wins,” Almquist said. “Coach

Shipman doesn’t want his name off that board. I think he will be

happy if Dean gets 34 and they both share it, though.”

The first step in breaking the record will be today’s San Clemente

invitational tournament, which draws some of the top wrestlers in

Orange County.

But Dean doesn’t know who he is wrestling.

He rarely does.

“I don’t look at [tournament] brackets and try to analyze who I’m

up against,” Dean said. “I don’t know who I’m wrestling until I shake

their hand before the match most of the time.”

Dean said he is interested in wrestling at Golden West College and

then moving on to a four-year school where this cowboy will ride into

the sunset.