Lopez Puts a Lot of Energy Into Wrestling : Olympic Festival: La Mesa man headed for third round and likely gold medal.

A minute and a half of esctasy.

An hour and a half of agony.

La Mesa’s Alex Lopez took 89 seconds of hyper-extended energy to pin John Stanley in the 105.5 freestyle weight class at the Olympic Festival Monday night at El Camino College.

After a brief post-match interview, Lopez spent the next 90 minutes trying to make weight.

Ah, the joys of wrestling.

“Two pounds, I have to lose two pounds,” said Lopez, looking like a man ready to be shot out of a cannon. “I never have to lose that much. I have to go cycle, jump rope, run.”

Lopez’s impatience on the mat is a reflection of his life, which he seems to live in perpetual fast-forward.

“I do everything fast, I’m way-hyper,” said Lopez, who was nudged into wrestling 15 years ago by younger brother Randy, his current roommate and weight-lifting partner. “Like tonight, I didn’t want to go out there for five minutes. I just wanted to get it over with.”

And so he did. Lopez now takes a 2-0 record and eight points--by virtue of pins in the first two rounds--into today’s third round for the West. As long as he isn’t pinned, he is guaranteed a gold medal.

“I feel pretty good right now,” Lopez said. “This is pretty exciting. But I just go with it. I go all out. That’s my style. I get it done quick. I’m flashy.”

Rudy Guevara, coach of the West team, said: “I’ve seen that aggressive style a lot recently, and it really seems to work. The best defense is an offense, especially in wrestling.”

Lopez can be impulsive--he brought Guevara a lollipop after practice last week--but the coach was more taken by Lopez’s post-match behavior. Most wrestlers will ask for advice only after they’ve lost. Not Lopez.

“Win or lose, he’ll ask what he did wrong. It’s a pleasure to work with a kid like that.”

A kid that had to grow up fast. In 1988, Lopez became the second wrestler from Alamosa High, in southern Colorado, to win a state championship. He won the title two weeks after his father drowned in a boating accident.

“My father told me I was going to be a state champion,” said Lopez, winner of the 98-pound class. “That was really a motivator for me.”

Lopez, who will turn 21 at the end of the month, took two years off from the sport after high school to “reevaluate,” his life. During that time, he moved to San Diego and has since enrolled at Palomar College.

“San Diego was a natural draw for me,” he said. “It’s where I was born and adopted from, but I haven’t tried to find my natural parents.”

Instead, he’s trying to find his niche. Lopez started competing again in February and now wrestles for the California Jets, a San Clemente-based club team. Lopez hasn’t exactly lit a fire under the wrestling world, but he is slowly making his presence know. He was eighth at the National Championships this year in Greco-Roman and he placed fourth in Freestyle and sixth in Greco-Roman at the University National Championships. He qualified for the festival with a first at a regional tournament in Wyoming in March.

This summer he is taking classes at Palomar--he has an eye on a marketing or teaching degree--working at University Towne Center and bulking up.

The lightest weight class in college is 118, and Lopez plans on wrestling at that weight until he cuts back to 105.5 again for international competition.

“I want to go back to 105 for 1996. 96 is the dream. They’re here, you know,” he said with a grin. “So there will be a good crowd. You’ll hate yourself if you don’t try. I just don’t want to go, I want to win.”

Lopez’ chose wrestling over a handful of sports he experimented with, for reasons he explained as followed:

“There are so much to hate about it, you have to like it,” he said. “There’s so much discipline. You can’t fight with your fists, you can’t eat, you have to make weight, there are so many things you have to be disciplined about. You just gotta like it.”

Wrestling Notes

Laurence Jackson of San Diego was a winner in the 149.5 freestyle weight class for the West. Jackson decisioned Terry Steiner of Iowa City, Iowa, 4-2. . . . Another San Diego wrestler, Phillip Jones, decisioned Ken Klein, also of Iowa City, 6-0, for the West. The West defeated the North, 21-18, in front of 878. Finals begin at 7 p.m. Greco-Roman competition begins today at 4 p.m.