Not many freshmen around the country can say they took down the best of the best in their sport en route to a third-place finish at the NCAA tournament and All-American honors. Redshirt sophomore Tariq Wilson did just that last year and is looking to build off of that for a strong sophomore campaign.

Wilson first found wrestling when his uncle took him to a practice, and from that point on he became incredibly intrigued by the sport.

“It was something I had never seen or heard about before,” Wilson said. “I ended up going to watch a couple of the team’s practices, when eventually I asked the coach if I could practice with the team. He gave me a pair of shoes and told me to get out there.”

When Wilson was younger, he played basketball and wrestled, but eventually that became too much, and he stuck with wrestling full-time.

Wilson is from Steubenville, Ohio, which is just over eight hours from NC State, but Wilson is able to feel at home here, and that was one of his main reasons for choosing the Wolfpack.

“First, it was the great environment the team set forth,” Wilson said. “I also made a good connection with the coaches, Pat [Popolizio], Adam [Hall], Obe [Blanc], and they made me feel at home. The campus is beautiful, everything is close by.”

This relaxed, easy-going feeling that Wilson had when he visited NC State showed in his matches last year. It was most noticeable in the NCAA tournament, where he entered unseeded and came out in third place.

“The whole tournament was fun, from working out, laughing and having a good time,” Wilson said. “I didn’t want to focus on it being the NCAAs and the biggest tournament of the season. More of a ‘go have fun and lay it on the line’ mentality.”

This is a mentality that head coach Pat Popolizio looks to instill to all of his wrestlers. He does not view the rankings as important and wants Wilson and the rest of the team to keep their focus away from them.

“What makes Tariq so good is he doesn’t get caught up in the nonsense with rankings or what anyone thinks,” Popolizio said. “None of that stuff matters, and it’s not going to stop any one of our guys from accomplishing their goals. If we focus on those rankings, we will not accomplish what we want to as a team and individually. Tariq is great at this, and that is why he believes he can win a national championship.”

Wilson has always had that inner confidence in his abilities, but continuing to defeat more well-known wrestlers at the NCAAs only helped to confirm that confidence. This confidence will only increase going into this season for Wilson.

“I knew I could be good, but I didn’t know how good I was until I got to the NCAA tournament,” Wilson said. “For this season, I have a lot of confidence going in, not worrying about what guy I have or who’s in my weight class, but going out there to wrestle and doing what I usually do with the hopes of scoring lots of points for my team.”

With a younger squad this year, Popolizio is looking for his team to do the little things and improve every week. He believes that their talent and work ethic is comparable to any of his past teams.

As for Wilson, he has many goals he hopes to accomplish this year during the ACC and NCAA championships.

“My goals for this year are to win it all at the NCAAs, because I fell short last year, and just watching the finals last year made me feel left out,” Wilson said. “For the ACC tournament, I want to have a better performance than I did last year. I finished fourth, but I want to capture a title this year and in a dominant fashion.”

Wilson also looks forward to the future and life after wrestling.

“In the next two to three years, aside from wrestling, I am looking to graduate with a bachelor’s in business and communication,” Wilson said. “I also want to graduate with honor roll because while school is tough, it is more important than wrestling in my book. After that, I’ll be looking for a job that hopefully intertwines business and communication.”

You can catch Wilson and the rest of the NC State wrestling team at the Wolfpack Duals this Saturday, Nov. 17 beginning at 2:00 p.m. against Davidson.