THE PREPS : Masters’ Wrestling Championships : Concentrating on Sticking Around a Lot Longer : Esperanza’s Rob Langenwalter Planning to Improve on Last Year’s Showing

Rob Langenwalter walked into the Masters’ wrestling meet last year as Esperanza High School’s pride and joy at 115 pounds, not to mention the Southern Section 4-A champion.

Only a sophomore and with just two years of competitive wrestling experience, Langenwalter had a record of 40-2 and looked just short of a lock to qualify for the state championships. The Masters brings together the Southern Section’s divisions (1-A through 4-A) and sends the top six finishers at each weight to the state tournament in Stockton.

Then something not so funny happened. The first round.

Just as quickly as someone could say good morning, Langenwalter was out of the Masters. He had lost his first-round match to an unseeded wrestler, and when that wrestler lost in the second round, Langenwalter was done for the year.

“I was devastated,” he said.

Those around him were just plain shocked. They knew that of all his considerable skills, Langenwalter’s most valuable and pronounced were his intensity and focus.

“He has the perfect wrestling attitude,” Esperanza Coach Chuck Bishop said. “Completely dedicated, completely loyal to hard work, he’s prone toward success.”

Steve Stewart, Esperanza assistant coach, remembers looking at Langenwalter in that first-round match and being able to tell “that it wasn’t him out there. There was nothing in his eyes. Usually he’s a nail on the mat. He’s so determined, nothing is going to stop him.”

A year after someone did, Langenwalter is back at the Masters--which takes place today, beginning at 9:30 a.m. at Fountain Valley High--determined to stick around past lunchtime and earn a trip to Stockton.

Once again, he’ll walk in as the 4-A champion, this time at 119 pounds. This time, he says, there is more focus on this tournament and on the state championships, for which only one Esperanza wrestler--Trevor Hargraves--has qualified.

Looking back, he believes the dizzying speed of his ascent to wrestling prominence probably brought about his fall, too.

“I think I was too satisfied with what I had done,” he said.

It’s nothing of the sort this time around.

“I go to bed every night thinking about it (the Masters) and I wake up thinking about it,” he said.

Which might sound a bit obsessive but is pretty accepted fare around the Langenwalter household, since Rob has three older brothers--John, Rich and Ed--who also wrestled at Esperanza.

“Wrestling is always the main topic around the house,” he said. “Even at Christmas.”

Though his first year of official wrestling competition didn’t come until his eighth-grade year, he had done his share of turns and takedowns on the family living room floor.

“His brothers really helped him,” Stewart said. “He was well advanced for his age. When Rob was in the eighth grade, we had a 98-pound sophomore who was undefeated at Esperanza. Rob beat him.”

Langenwalter’s freshman year signaled a turning point in the overall fortunes of Esperanza wrestling. Not only was there an exceptional talent--Langenwalter--coming in, there was a new coach, Bishop.

Until that time, Esperanza, a school noted for having one of the most sophisticated weightlifting programs and some of the biggest and strongest athletes in Orange County, always had fared poorly in wrestling.

“It was a program with very little success and therefore very low morale,” Bishop said.

In three years, Esperanza has been elevated to the elite. This season, it won its first league championship when it tied with Katella and El Dorado for the Empire League title. The Empire League was so tough this season that those three teams all placed in the top 10 in the 4-A championships. El Dorado won the 4-A title, Esperanza was third.

Bishop is not shy to say that his team’s progress owes a great deal to Langenwalter.

“The other kids learn from Rob’s instruction and his example,” Bishop said. “He’s our third coach. He’s been a leader on this team since the day he showed up.”

Though he’ll come into this year’s Masters with an even more impressive 40-1 record--his only loss was to a 126-pounder--the road hasn’t been smooth.

Ligament damage in his left leg caused him to miss two dual meets and means he must still wear a brace.

“That was one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me,” he said. “I thought it was all over.”

It was almost all over at the 4-A championships last Saturday at Edison High. Again in the first round, Langenwalter struggled against an unseeded wrestler.

The score was 0-0 after the first period, and things were so sluggish for Langenwalter that he flashed back to last year’s Masters.

“My whole season flashed before my eyes,” he said.

He managed a 1-0 victory in that match and made his way to the final against San Clemente’s Chris Wilyard. Langenwalter had a 4-1 lead in the third period with little more than a minute remaining when Wilyard started to rally. A takedown cut Langenwalter’s lead to 4-3, and an escape with six seconds left tied the score at 4-4.

But in the last seconds of the match, Langenwalter performed an escape that gave him a point and the match.

“All I was thinking was ‘Explode, explode, get to your feet,’ ” he said. “It seemed like it took forever. I didn’t think I would make it, but when I looked at the tape I did the whole thing in about 3 seconds. It seemed to last about a half hour to me.”

If things go right this year, Langenwalter will spend more than a half hour at the Masters’ meet and he’ll spend next weekend in Stockton.