Daily Journal Athlete of the Week: Carlmont’s James Brendza

It was, at times, a violent looking match, with the light-heavyweight Brendza getting bounced around the mat by an admittedly stronger and more experienced wrestler.

“It’s like I signed up for MMA,” Brendza said.

But there was nothing theatrical about Brendza’s agonizing scream midway through the second round of his championship match. It was the moment where Hernandez seemed to gain the advantage — he wrapped Brendza and lifted the big sophomore for a reverse throw — only to be penalized for a clasping violation, as Brendza’s right knee slammed into the mat awkwardly, causing him to cry out in agony.

This was a weak spot for Brendza, who had bruised the knee in practice the previous day. He then reaggravated it Saturday in his semifinal match. And with the championship match being paused for more than a minute for an injury timeout, it seemed as though it might be the end of the No. 3 seed’s Cinderella bid for his first wrestling title in going up against the 222s’ No. 1 seed.

Brendza, however, made the decision to tough it out.

“Either way, even if I wasn’t going to be able to continue, I’d still want to go out there because I don’t want to give up,” Brendza said.

It turned out to be a pivotal decision.

Not only did Brendza use his unrefined but elusive wrestling technique to hang on for a victory, it was this first-place result that put Carlmont over the top for an unlikely team championship, as the PAL Ocean Division regular-season champion Scots proved the deepest squad Saturday at Sequoia. Despite hailing from the lower PAL Ocean, Carlmont upset PAL Bay Division frontrunner Half Moon Bay, snapping the Cougars’ streak of seven straight PAL tournament titles.

And it was all made possible by Brendza’s outlook in stepping onto the mat with Hernandez, an outlook that was not so much a strategy as it was a survival instinct.

“This one was just me trying not to die,” Brendza said with a boyish laugh.

It’s easy to lose sight of Brendza’s relative youth. The big sophomore said he gets that a lot. But not only is he inexperienced in the sense he is still an underclassman — the sophomore is in his first full varsity season, following the brief, unofficial 2020-21 season when he was a freshman — Brendza had never set foot on a wrestling mat until arriving at Carlmont.

“When I first started, I immediately fell in love with the sport,” Brendza said. “The team bonding, how we all get along together, we all support each other. It was really exciting.”

Brendza actually comes from a swimming background, and last season was a standout with the Carlmont junior-varsity swimming team as a butterfly specialist. And while wrestling and swimming might make an unusual combination for a high school athlete, he has certainly made the most of it.

“It’s unique,” Carlmont wrestling coach Ricardo Garcia said. “It’s very unique. Actually, his flexibility comes in really handy with some of the positions. Because he’s still so young, he’s not quite as strong as some of those other kids. So, he’s able to use his flexibility to neutralize that strength, which other wrestlers are very thrown off by.”

This was precisely the recipe that led to Brendza’s emerging from Saturday’s championship match with the individual PAL title at 222s. His slippery moves kept Hernandez scrambling until it forced the more experienced senior into a sequence of costly penalties. Four of Brendza’s points in the 6-4 victory were via penalties — the other 2 points were from intentional escapes — as he jumped out to a 6-0 lead before earning the win via DQ.

Then came waterworks, as Hernandez initiated a hug — it even seemed he was holding up the hobbled Brendza for a moment — in the wake of the violent round and a half of wrestling.

“All those light-heavyweights, they’re very emotional,” Garcia said. “They’re big guys. They have big hearts. And that’s just the way they are.”