Ruiz Has Been Able to Limit Picking to Moorpark, Wrestling : Junior colleges: Parents emphasized that education was the way to get out of the fields.

Two large lights hang from the rafters of the Moorpark College gym, shining down on a navy-colored mat that sits in the middle of the hardwood floor. The rest of the place is dark, creating a scene right out of an old boxing movie except for the rising cigar smoke from the shady, ringside characters.

But there’s no Jack Palance or Robert DeNiro or John Garfield anywhere in sight. Only young guys in warm-up suits, doing knee bends and running in place, waiting for their wrestling match to start. Jorge Ruiz is among them and he is ready to rumble.

After four bouts have been contested in lower weight classifications, it’s time for Ruiz. One of the top junior college wrestlers in the state, he is entered in the 150-pound division in this nonconference match against Mt. San Antonio because the team needs him at that weight, although he prefers to compete at 142 pounds.

Moorpark is trailing by four points when Ruiz goes to the mat, but not for long. Forty-four seconds into the bout, less than it takes to break a sweat, Ruiz pins his opponent and gives the Raiders a two-point edge on their way to a 36-10 victory. It was the fastest fall registered by a Moorpark wrestler this season and it improved Ruiz’s record (who has won another bout since) to 9-4.

“It was kind of easy tonight,” Ruiz said almost apologetically.

Wrestling comes easily to Ruiz. A former Southern Section champion at Coachella Valley High, he has been remarkably successful in the sport without hardly trying. He admittedly hates to train and loathes conditioning, relying, it seems, on sheer natural talent.

Or on the inner strength gathered from a humble childhood, one he says helped mold his character and determination.

The third of six children born to Mexican migrant farm workers, Ruiz was born in Yuba City, north of Sacramento, but grew up working the fields around the family home in Mecca in the Coachella Valley. Even surrounded by all those crops, Ruiz says, he remembers nights when everyone went to bed hungry.

“I worked in grapes, raisins, lemons, grapefruit, oranges,” said Ruiz, 21. “I did almost everything that can be done in the fields. . . . When we started off, we lived in a place that was no bigger than a living room. That was the whole house. We built our own (four-bedroom) house.”

They built it and, says Ruiz’s father, Felipe, almost destroyed it when the four boys would wrestle one another. Jorge’s older brother, 25-year-old Ramiro, and the second youngest, 18-year-old Felipe, also wrestled in high school. The youngest, Adolfo, plays football at Coachella Valley. And when they get together at the family home, they can practically shake the house off its foundation.

“They still go at it in the house and I get concerned they’ll break something,” said the elder Ruiz, laughing. “I tell them not to wrestle because they’ll end up getting upset with each other.”

Usually, the plea falls on deaf ears. Ruiz says he and his brothers are extremely competitive and hate losing to one another--at anything. One night recently, Ruiz said, he and one brother stayed up all night playing a video game because neither wanted to quit.

“He finally gave out, so I won,” he said.

Ruiz took up competitive wrestling in high school to emulate Ramiro, who finished fifth in the state at 105 pounds in 1986 and third at 112 pounds in ‘87, his junior and senior seasons at Coachella Valley. Jorge soon realized he had a knack for the sport and became the Southern Section Division 4-A champion in the 130-pound division his senior season in 1991 but lost to Gary Quintana of Selma in the state final. He was 169-29 during four seasons of varsity wrestling.

“My oldest brother was running track in high school and the wrestling coach saw him and thought he would make a good wrestler,” Ruiz said. “My mom (Elvia) didn’t want him to wrestle at first. She thought it was WWF (World Wrestling Federation) and he would break his bones. She used to pray before all the matches.”

After high school, Ruiz was set to receive financial aid and attend Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where brothers Ramiro and Felipe are now enrolled. Once there, however, Ruiz discovered that he was ineligible to wrestle because he had not taken the Scholastic Aptitude Test, an NCAA requirement for Division I athletes. He stayed at San Luis Obispo for a year and then transferred to Moorpark to be closer to his fiancee, Natalie Gomez, who attends Cal Lutheran.

He wasn’t about to return home, though, because his father is adamant about his children getting an education.

“They didn’t like it so much working in the fields,” said Felipe Sr., now a farm foreman. “I tell them that if they want to quit school, they can come back and have some real fun here. Many years ago, I was studying engineering in Mexico and quit to come here and make money. My wife and I have always said that even if we don’t make a dime, we’ll try to have our children finish school. That’s their best future.”

As luck would have it, Ruiz had joined one of the most respected junior college wrestling programs in the state. Under Coach John Keever, the Raiders have won two state team championships and 16 Western State Conference titles, and have had 50 All-Americans. But Keever didn’t even have to use that information as a selling point.

“I asked him, ‘Don’t you want to come over and visit and see if you like it?’ ” Keever said. “He said, ‘No, coach. I’m coming over to Moorpark.’ We were pretty fortunate to get him.”

Last season, Ruiz finished third in the state at 134 pounds and was named All-American and the team’s most outstanding wrestler. He was second on the squad with 97 takedowns and third with 27 victories against only six defeats.

This year, Ruiz believes--and Keever agrees--that he can make a serious run at the state 142-pound title and says he’ll step up his intensity and preparation another notch to achieve that goal. His approach will be fundamentally the same, just with a little extra oomph.

“I usually just attack, attack, attack,” said Ruiz, a physical education major who wants to be a college coach. “I try to break (opponents) down. Sometimes it’s more psychological and mental than physical.”

That rough, wrestling persona, Ruiz’s fiancee says, is not what he projects away from the gym.

“He claims not to be a people person, and he really doesn’t like large groups, but he is really at ease in small groups,” said Gomez, a communications major.

She and Ruiz plan to marry after they finish school. “He likes to share things about his family. He likes being with family and friends,” she said.

Nowadays, Ruiz spends most of his time away from wrestling and school either at Gomez’s apartment in Thousand Oaks or at the nearby trailer he calls home. The trailer, he says, was an idea that hasn’t panned out like he expected.

“My dad got it for me,” Ruiz said. “I thought it would be more economical, but it costs me $300 a month to park it. I don’t even have water or a phone in there. I take showers at school or at my fiancee’s. Back home it would cost me $150. I might as well get a room next semester.”

One with a sturdy floor and strong walls, just in case the brothers come to visit.