The News-Gazette's 22nd All-Area boys' wrestling team: Casillas makes name for himself
· Yahoo Sports
Apr. 11—MAHOMET — Marco Casillas needed two takedowns. That's it.
Visit saltysenoritaaz.org for more information.
Two takedowns, and he could call himself a state champion.
But he needed them in 10 seconds.
Casillas trailed St. Viator senior Jaxon Penovich 4-0 as the final seconds started ticking off the clock in the Class 2A 190-pound state championship match. The Mahomet-Seymour sophomore had finally worn down his opponent to where he could pull off one takedown, but he needed another. Casillas let Penovich up with just four seconds left and started chasing him around the mat at State Farm Center in Champaign, but just when it looked like he might catch him, the buzzer sounded.
"I was that close," Casillas said. "Just wish I had a little more time."
M-S coach Rob Ledin said Casillas "had him on the ropes" and believes his star wrestler would have gotten it done if he had "a few more seconds."
Despite settling for second place that night on Feb. 21, Casillas said he has been able to take a step back and appreciate just how special of a season he had. He finished with a record of 51-4, with all four of his losses coming against state champions: one from Wisconsin, one from Missouri, three-time Illinois 3A champ Aaron Stewart and Penovich. Both Stewart and Penovich are Illinois signees.
"It was a pretty impressive season," Ledin said. "His losses were pretty high-caliber losses. We traveled a lot and were able to put him in a lot of situations that challenged him. He had a really good season, and I'm real impressed with how he handled everything we threw at him."
It may not have ended in the state title Casillas has worked for since he started his high school career last year, but it did move him one step closer to achieving that goal after placing third at 175 pounds as a freshman. And it earned him The News-Gazette's All-Area Boys' Wrestler of the Year honor.
"All the hard work paid off," Casillas said. "I'm excited to see what happens in the future."
So are his teammates. While senior captain Justus Vrona, who set the Bulldogs' pins record this season, won't be at M-S to experience Casillas' last two years alongside him, he knows more big things are in store after watching him lead the team the last two years.
"You can always expect a win," Vrona said. "It's always fun watching him get takedown after takedown. It's never a boring match. Watching Marco, especially in the state matches, you're always on the edge of your seat."
Another M-S captain and fellow All-Area First-Team pick, junior Talon Decker, shared Vrona's sentiment, but there's a part of him that wishes he was graduating, too. As the Bulldogs' 165-pound wrestler, Decker would occasionally get the task of practicing with Casillas, and that matchup was pretty one-sided.
"Whenever you watch a match that he dominates, you can see the other guy absolutely give up, and it's rewarding to see the hard work we put in going into effect," Decker said. "He kills me in practice, so it's also rewarding to see him killing everybody else. I try to avoid it as much as I can, but when I do get stuck with him, it's not fun."
Many, including Casillas, expected this level of success right away, and much of that stems from how he came up through the sport. Casillas started wrestling when he was 6 years old but stepped away from it for a couple years to focus on basketball. In fourth grade, something clicked. He realized "I could decide my own fate" in wrestling, so he started to put everything back into the sport.
A few years later, Casillas saw his older brother, Mateo, in the same position he's in right now. Mateo won the News-Gazette's All-Area Wrestler of the Year award as a sophomore in 2021 and went on to win it again in 2023 after claiming a 2A state title at 195 pounds.
He's one of only four wrestlers to win the honor twice — nobody has won it three times — but Casillas is confident he can surpass him.
"It just gives me motivation to do better than he did," Casillas said of his brother. "That's what I've been trying to do my whole life. It's just a competition. I think I could get a couple more of these to beat him."
Ledin knew he had another powerhouse wrestler from the Casillas family coming after Mateo graduated. Of course, he had to see how Marco would adapt to high school competition first, and the two brothers' styles were a little different, but he had a feeling he'd be coaching another top-level talent soon.
"Once he started to go through his freshman year, we realized he had some traits of Mateo, but he's also different," Ledin said. "Mateo was always going to impose his will on you, and people couldn't deal with his strength. With Marco, you get more slick moves. We've asked Marco to get a few more pins, but I think he would probably prefer to tech everyone he faces. He puts in a lot of time outside our wrestling room, which also makes him special. In many cases, we're just tweaking what he does, not really showing him anything new."
Right after his championship loss to Penovich, Casillas was already thinking of how he could improve. Partly because he still had three more matches to wrestle the following weekend.
Six days after the individual state finals concluded, the Bulldogs competed in the dual team state tournament at Grossinger Motors Arena in Bloomington. M-S defeated Wheeling in the quarterfinals, lost to Providence Catholic in the semifinals and beat Glenwood in the third-place match. Casillas won all three of his matches in those team bouts to lead the Bulldogs to their second straight state trophy and their third in the last five years.
"There's always room for improvement," Casillas said. "I'm just working on trying to get better."
Hard to imagine Casillas getting better than he already is. Decker just laughed and shook his head at the thought, confessing "I don't know what to say because he's way better than me."
But with the successful culture M-S has created and the talented company Casillas keeps, as well as the elite company he's hoping to join, improving is the only option. After all, there's still one more match Casillas needs to win. Then, he can call himself a state champion.
"We preach that you can always get better," Ledin said. "He's a pretty complete wrestler, but we can still work on some positions. Not many people can hold him down, but that's one of the positions he needs to make sure he can do, especially at the next level. Just some little things we can keep working on. He's got to get better if he wants to win the title. I've only coached one undefeated wrestler in my whole 30-plus-year career. We're going to keep trying to get him losses and keep making him better."