No Doubt About It, San Clemente’s Tapia Gaining Confidence : Wrestling: Junior, who is nearly unbeatable on the mat, is learning to deal with his self-doubt and pressure of winning by taking it one step at a time.

Funny thing about goals, often they seem out of the question until you exceed one and set your sights on another. Then, you wonder what all the anxiety and doubt was about.

Zac Tapia, a 130-pound junior wrestler at San Clemente High School, has finally begun to understand this elementary lesson. That’s not to say, he’s become thoroughly confident in his ability to achieve everything he’d like, however. The truth be known, he’s almost unbeatable on the mat, but he’s still waging an on-going battle with his nervous system.

So far he’s taking it one step at a time, and that seems to work best.

When he was a freshman, his friends and teammates encouraged him to challenge varsity wrestlers for their spots. Many times, Tapia responded by mumbling something about not being good enough and the others being too good. Once, he worked up enough courage to speak to former Triton Coach John Owens about moving up, but Tapia went away convinced the timing wasn’t quite right.

As a sophomore, he made the varsity with ease. But with only a goal of advancing to the Southern Section meet, he decided his season wasn’t as good as it should have been.

For the record, Tapia, who wrestled at 125 pounds, finished 41-15 and missed a berth in the State tournament by only two points. He also was the South Coast League champion and finished fourth in the section 4-A finals.

“I guess it was good for a sophomore,” he said. “For somebody who’s really up there, it’s not that good. Fifteen losses is a lot. It was a year for experience.”

With that out of the way, Tapia raised his expectations this season. Now, he says, he’ll settle for nothing less than a trip to the State meet, March 6-7 at the University of the Pacific’s Spanos Center in Stockton. Once there, he expects to finish no worse than fifth place.

And there’s no reason to believe it won’t happen. After all, Tapia is 29-2 this season and Orange County’s top-ranked 130-pound wrestler. But the bugaboos of self-doubt won’t go away, no matter how hard Tapia tries.

“I feel like I have a lot to learn,” he said. “I don’t feel like I have my takedowns as smooth as I want.

“Some people think I’m better than I am. They have more confidence in you than you have in yourself.”

San Clemente Coach Mark Calentino, sitting nearby, listened and shook his head.

“I think he lies to me sometimes,” Tapia said, nodding toward Calentino.

“If you win and you wrestle poorly, I’ll tell you,” Calentino fired back.

“He has a tremendous amount of potential,” Calentino said. “He came into this season a better wrestler than last year. A lot of it I attribute to his work ethic.”

Tapia missed much of San Clemente’s summer league meets because he made a commitment to work with his older brother installing child-proof fences around swimming pools. It meant spending hot summer days in far-flung back yards in Simi Valley, for example, instead of wrestling in gymnasiums.

Still, it taught him a valuable lesson.

“I don’t want to do that for a living,” he said.

This season, he’s learned something else. Winning so often has made him a marked man, which has brought on a new kind of pressure.

“Sometimes I think too much about winning,” Tapia said. “I win a lot of the time, but a lot of the time I’m not satisfied. If I lose and I know I did my best, then I’m satisfied.”

During day-long tournaments, Tapia relieves that stress by catching a few winks between matches.

“Lately, I’ve been more anxious than nervous,” said Tapia, who takes a pillow with him. “Last year, I was a lot more nervous. Maybe I’m not so bad this year because I have a lot more confidence. I think I wrestle better when I’m relaxed.”

Maybe, Tapia’s finally hit on something. Forget, specific goals. Simply relax and wrestle. Well, there’s always next season to master that one.