North Bay Haven's David Mercado making a name for himself in freshman season

When David Mercado joined the North Bay Haven wrestling team, Buccaneers coach JJ Gibbens knew who the young freshman was, though he wasn't quite sure exactly what he had on his hands.

Following his first competition in January in The Bash at Rutherford High School, Mercado left little doubt in Gibbens' mind that there was something very different about the newest occupant of the North Bay Haven wrestling room.

"You can see sometimes that kids have lots of potential, but until they actually get on the mat you just don't know," Gibbens said. "Sometimes they get on the mat and it just doesn't translate. With David, he came out of the gate on fire."

Mercado dominated in his varsity debut, winning all seven of his matches by fall and being named the Most Outstanding Wrestler of the tournament.

"We started to realize we've got ourselves something here and we had to find him some more competition," Gibbens said. "As more competitions came he kept winning. We saw the potential and thought he could do it, but him actually going out and winning all of these big matches, it was amazing."

Mercado went on to take first-place finishes at the Marlin IBT on Jan. 18, the George Mulligan Memorial Touranment on Jan. 23 where he was also named the tournament's Most Outstanding Wrestler, the Arnold IBT on Feb. 8, and the Gator Brawl on Feb. 13.

After completing an undefeated 31-0 regular season, he went on to capture the District 1-1A title on Feb. 20, winning all three matches by fall. Mercado ran the win streak all the way up to 37 with three more wins to start the Region 1 tournament last weekend before finally taking his first loss via 8-6 decision against Florida High's Micah Purdue in the region title match.

Mercado said he was disappointed by the loss, though he was able to award himself some credit for making it that far before taking his first defeat. While confident in his abilities, it's not exactly what he had in mind when he first joined the wrestling team.

"I did very much surprise myself," he said. "I did not think I'd go through with only one loss through regionals. I didn't even know if I would make it through to regionals."

While Mercado's win streak ended at the region tournament, his season did not. His third win qualified him for this weekend's state championships in Kissimmee, with the preliminary round scheduled for Friday and the championship round for Saturday.

Win or lose at state, it has been a remarkable freshman season for a kid whose only previous wrestling experience before this season was a month of AAU competition as an eighth grader.

"It does blow my mind," Gibbens said of Mercado's 37-1 start to his high school wrestling career. "I've been coaching for 20 years and refereeing, I've seen kids all over the state and you see the natural progression of these kids. I've never had a kid come out of the gate this quickly. You can get kids who come out fast and have some success, but they've all wrestled as kids and came up through wrestling and getting that experience. He just walked on the mat and went 37-0 before he had his first loss."

While Mercado is relatively new to wrestling, he is certainly no novice when it comes to grappling. He has been training and competing in Brazilian jui-jitsu since he was 6 years old and currently trains at Gulf Coast Grappling Academy where he has earned a green and black belt, the highest rank a Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner can acquire before the age of 16.

While there are significant differences between wrestling and jiu-jitsu, Mercado said there are enough similarities that he believes his years of jiu-jitsu training made the transition to wrestling much easier than it would've been otherwise.

"Jiu-jitsu has helped a lot," he said. "You have to be quicker than your opponent and you have to be able to think on the spot just like in wrestling. What I've heard a lot is people telling me that my hips are really good and just quicker than the other person, so that ends up helping me a lot."

Mercado said he decided to make the transition to wrestling because he believed it would give him an opportunity down the road to earn a college scholarship, an avenue not widely available in jiu-jitsu.

After his first competitive match for North Bay Haven, a 12-second pin of Bay High's Ivan Alvarez, Mercado started to wonder if the transition wouldn't be nearly as difficult as he thought.

"I was like, 'is this what wrestling is supposed to be like?'" Mercado said. "It got put in my head like pins should be normal. I don't want to make it sound like I thought wrestling would be easy, but I thought it would be much harder."

Mercado got a bit of a wake-up call in the region final with his first loss to Purdue, who he had previously beaten by fall at the Mulligan Memorial, though he said it taught him an important lesson.

"I have to learn how to deal with people who, I don't want to say people who don't want to wrestle, but people who don't want to get in close with me," he said. "That's where I shine and do well, so opponents like to keep me away. He had gone against me and didn't think he could do well in close, so he kept me further away than usual."

Gibbens said he was impressed with how the freshman handled his first setback and said it could be a blessing that the loss came before he competed at state though after he had already qualified to do so.

"It came at a good time if you have to have one," he said. "It's at a time where we can assess it and deal with it and move on for what's important (at state). He's pretty resilient and is humble in everything he does. I know the loss stung a little bit, but he bounced back fairly well. I was able to relate it to when I lost a regional championship, like, 'I understand, I get it.' It stinks, but we're not done. We can bounce back from this.

"The first loss was inevitable. It was going to happen somewhere. He has to understand that everybody has to go through this part. It's how you respond after the loss that's the biggest thing. That's how you're able to learn about yourself."

Mercado said he had high expectations for this year's state tournament and hoped to use the weekend as a barometer to see where he's at and how much work he has to do to get where he ultimately wants to be.

"I’m hoping they can show me how I am compared to the people who are at the top and who know exactly what they’re doing," he said. "I want to see how much more I need to work on than what I have."

Even if Mercado doesn't win a state championship in his first trip to Kissimmee, it feels almost like an inevitablity in the future given his success as a freshman.

"I think now being able to do this as a freshman and still having three years to go to get better, I believe that I'll be doing much better in the next year and after that," Mercado said. "I've seen how I'm doing as a new wrestler, I can only imagine how much better I'll do when I'm more experienced."

This article originally appeared on The News Herald: North Bay Haven's David Mercado making a name for himself in freshman season