NIC’s V.J. Giulio throws a wrestler to the mat at the NJCAA Wrestling Championships in Spokane. Beau Valdez/Sentinel
Northwest College’s Jonathan Wixom stood in V.J. Giulio’s way in the final two tournament championship matches of the season. Giulio took care of Wixom with a 16-4 major decision to win the 197-pound West Region Championship Feb. 15. He then pinned Wixom in 1:29 in the most important match of the season, the championship round of the NJCAA Wrestling Championships on March 1 in Spokane.
Giulio’s national title win over Wixom may not have been shocking, but the next step he took was.
After Giulio and the other 197-pound All-Americans were honored, Giulio brought his girlfriend, Jordan Moyer, up to the All-American podium and proposed to her.
“I went in there and I was just excited,” Giulio said. “I was pumped. I had no doubt in my mind that I was going to take that home because I was feeling on top of the world already. And I knew that if I didn’t win, I wasn’t going to propose to her, so it was a little extra incentive.”
Giulio also earned the Ernest Gould Outstanding Wrestler award.
Derrick Booth (174 pounds) and Taylor Kornoely (285) of NIC finished sixth individually and the third-ranked Cardinals took sixth as a team also with 72 points.
Kornoely lost to Dequence Goodman, the eventual national champion, of Lincoln College 7-6 in the championship semifinals.
“Kornoely’s double-overtime loss today was just a killer because I think he should have been in the finals there and have a chance to win it, but that’s the way it goes,” NIC head coach Pat Whitcomb said.
Whitcomb said it was “not our best tournament.”
“Sometimes I’ve been on the other end where you get rolling kind of like Northeast Oklahoma did this one,” Whitcomb said. “You win every one of those one-point matches.”
NIC’s Jeremy Golding was ranked first in his 149-pound weight class coming into the tournament but lost both of his matches due to injury defaults. Golding dislocated his elbow in practice about a week prior to the national tournament and wore a brace on his elbow during his matches in Spokane.
Whitcomb said it was probably an injury that would require six to eight weeks of recovery but Golding tried to come back six days later at nationals. Golding finished fifth at 149 pounds last season.
Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College ran away from the competition to win the national title with 169 points. Northwest College placed second with 149 points and Clackamas took third with 139.
Northeastern Oklahoma coach Joe Renfro earned his third consecutive national championship. He won a national championship with Labette Community College in 2012 and shared one with NIC last season at Labette. Renfro also earned the Scholarship Coach of the Year award.
“It’s truly an honor when your peers vote for you for something like that,” Renfro said.
Before the championship round, four men were inducted into the NJCAA wrestling Hall of Fame, including NIC’s Whitcomb and Kenny Rucker.
Whitcomb helped his team to back-to-back national championships in 1986 and 1987 and earned two individual national championships also. He has won four national titles as a coach at NIC.
Rucker also won back-to-back team and individual national championships in 1985 and 1986.