Tyler Winslow: Carrying ?on a family tradition

Tyler Winslow is the latest in the lineage of wrestling Winslows.|

All season long, Tyler Winslow got few opportunities to wrestle.

The Sonoma Valley High junior standout was the recipient of numerous forfeits. He didn’t wrestle in a single Sonoma County League dual meet because there was either nobody in his 222-pound weight class or they passed on the opportunity to wrestle him. Even at the North Coast Section Duals last month, both Ukiah and Del Norte had wrestlers in his weight class, but in both instances, they forfeited.

Last weekend, he got a chance to wrestle in the NCS Meet, and this weekend he won’t get any forfeits at the state wrestling meet in Bakersfield.

Winslow takes his 26-5 record to Bakersfield.

“Most of the kids in NCS had 50-plus matches,” he said. “I was 30 (matches) behind them.”

“It was frustrating getting up at 4 a.m., putting in a 12-hour day and not getting a chance to wrestle,” he said.

While he was the top seed at 222 pounds at the NCS tournament in Union City last weekend, he’s going to Bakersfield unseeded.

“They only seed the top 16,” Winslow said. “And there’s 42 wrestlers in my weight class.”

He’s been to the state meet before, but it was as a 10-year-old spectator when his older brother, Jordan, made the trek downstate.

If there was a first family of wrestling in Sonoma Valley, Tyler is the latest in the next generation. His grandfather, Roger, was a long-time wrestling coach who built the Dragon program in the early 1960s; his late father, Deets, was an outstanding wrestler and later distinguished coach of the Dragons; his uncle, Travis, was a standout who qualified for the state meet; and his brother, Jordan, also qualified for the state meet.

Tyler’s coach for the past two years, Nico Saldana, said he’s always learning and is very coachable.

“I knew he was good,” Saldana said. “I just didn’t know how good he was.”

The 17-year-old has been wrestling most of his life. He started when he was about 6 and has been almost continuously wrestling since then, although he did take a year off when he was in middle school.

“I grew up around it,” he said. “I got back into it around the time my dad died.”

His dad, Deets Winslow, died in a boating accident in 2014. “That’s a lot of the reason I wrestle,” he said. “He wanted it (wrestling) to be fun for me.”

Tyler’s excited about going to the state meet. “This is a new experience,” he said. And it’s a learning opportunity for next year.”

The competition is going to be much better than what he faced this year when he did wrestle.

“They’re really big,” he said. “Everybody’s good – and there’s no walkovers.”

His coach said even though Tyler is undersized – he weighed in at the NCS meet at 202 pounds – he’s powerful.

“He’s always been a tough wrestler,” Saldana said. “He has an offensive mindset and goes into every match looking to score.”

Saldana, who has coached state meet wrestlers at other schools, said Tyler is one of the best. “He’s a battler,” he said. “The great wrestlers don’t give up points. And even when they don’t win, they believe they should have won.”

Even though he’ll be giving up 20 pounds to most of opponents, Tyler isn’t daunted. “They’re harder to move,” he said. But he uses his speed and quickness to overcome the weight difference.

“Tyler has the ability not to give in – and not to give up,” Saldana said.

Despite the fact that he was brought up in a wrestling family, football is his first love.

Last fall, playing linebacker for the Dragons, he was named the Sonoma County League’s Defensive Player of the Year. He hopes to play football in college and wants to be an airline pilot.

“But I’d regret it if I didn’t wrestle,” he said.

He tries not to think too much about his upcoming bouts. Last Saturday at the NCS meet in Union City, the semi-finals ended at around 12:30 p.m. and the finals weren’t supposed to get under way until 6 p.m. So he and some of his teammates went to the movies and saw “Black Panther.”

“We had to leave the theater at about 5:30 so we could get back in time for the finals,” he said.

Besides Saldana, assistant coaches Scooter McAllister and John Bartolome, Tyler’s mom and brother will be in the stands this weekend at the Rabobank Arena in Bakersfield.

Tyler knows his dad will be watching too.

“I know he’d be proud of me,” he said.

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