'I can feel the whole team behind me': Jeremiah Casillas perseveres with North wrestling

Something took hold of Jeremiah Casillas after last season and kept him from leaving the mat for good.

The Bloomington North senior, who is off to a 20-4 start at 165 pounds entering this weekend, had started wrestling when he was in seventh grade. By the time he got to high school, he’d seen the frequent coaching turnover in the program and experienced another after this sophomore year when Roy Bruce took over.

There was no specific reason for starting to wrestle, he said. Football was a no-go and he didn’t want to do any other sports.

“It was like, “Oh, we have a wrestling team,” Casillas said Tuesday night after his first-period pin helped cap a 42-22 win over Edgewood.  Wrestling did run in the family, as he found out.

“My dad, all three uncles, my step-uncle, three cousins...” Some of them will show up at his matches and offer advice. But no coaching has stuck like the kind he’s gotten the past two years. It was a coaching change for the better.

"Ironically enough, I'm not one much for competing,” Casillas said. “Because last year, I was thinking about not doing this anymore. Because I could not get past the competing part. Just too much anxiety.

“So now coming into a match I basically have no anxiety. I can always feel the team behind me. I'm not going to be ghosted if I lose. I’m going to get some feedback and work on it the next day."

Casillas went 9-19 as a 145 sophomore, knocked out at sectional after three matches. He improved to 27-11 last year, taking third at sectional at 152, then ousted from the first round at regional with an 11-0 major.

This year, Casillas claimed fourth at the 32-team Mooresville Holiday Classic, where both losses came to Terre Haute South’s Coy Bender. He won the title in the Xaxby’s Invitational at Providence.

“A lot of the change has been more consistent coaching,” Casillas said. “Bruce brought in four guys with him.”

And though it’s only been not even a full two years, it feels stable. It feels like family.

"Lot of just knowing that these people are not going to leave,” Casillas said. “We’re going to come back five years from now, however many years it is, and they are still going to be here.”

That’s just the feeling Bruce wanted to instill.

“We wanted this to be about North guys and being proud of the program,” he said. “And Jeremiah is bought in.”

Winning the Bo Henry award was ‘humbling’ for Casillas

Being a family means holding everyone accountable, Casillas says, making sure no wrestler is left behind.

“No matter if you’re JV or don’t get any time on the mat, you’re still seen as a part,” he said. “You may not compete but you’re not put on a backburner and not talked to. You’re always in the conversation.”

As a senior and leader, Casillas helps set the tone for that and the public face of the program.

"Just with that,” Casillas said, “I really have to make sure, not leave something with the program because I’ll keep coming back, but just making sure the team is sculpted how I wanted it to be, the morals I want us to have. I want us to be respected.

“I want this team to be a family. Even people who don’t wrestle, they’ll point to us, ‘Hey, that guy wrestles, he’s such a good person. So maybe I’ll want to try wrestling, too, and see where they learned that from.”

At the Bo Henry Classic, he was rather stunned to find out he was the winner of the Bo Henry Award. It’s given to a senior who most embodies the best attributes of the sport.

“It was nice,” Casillas said. “I started hearing the list, nah, it’s not me. Then I heard it was going to a senior and they said 165 pounds and I’m thinking, there’s not many in that weight class here.

“Then they read my name. ‘Oh, it’s me.’ I really had to stand and think about that. I was selected out of all 16 teams there and I’m the one who got picked. It’s humbling to think I have this effect on people. My actions actually stick with people.”

Casillas has a lot to shoot for down the homestretch

North wanted to be a welcoming program, but Bruce also knew it had to toughen up. Wrestling is unforgiving. Make it fun, but also get the work in. Morning and afternoon practices set the tone.

“Mainly getting you in there, making sure that you are a wrestler,” Casillas said. “Just having a year of that behind you then throughout the summer, the program goes continuously throughout the summer, knowing that you do this, not necessarily for a living, but you like this sport.”

Casillas has also become a more technical wrestler with a greater skillset than he had last year.

The coaches challenged him: “Instead of just doing what you're good at, you’re trying to branch off and doing stuff you’re not super familiar with," Casillas said.

He had a simple formula before.

“He’d make a move, then wait for the other guy to screw up,” Bruce said.

“A very simple thing about the sport is shooting,” Casillas said. “Doubles leg, single leg. Probably my whole career before this year, it was all body locks and throws. Just last year, I started to work on shots.”

Lots of practice and attention to detail with the coaches have paid off. He’s added even more to his arsenal.

“He was kind of a funky wrestler,” Bruce said. “He was strong in awkward positions, so we’ve honed that to be strong in good positions. He’s worked with my brother on tilts a lot.

“He’s an interesting kid. He doesn’t like to run but we’ve broken him out of his shell when it comes ot drilling. He’ll wrestle six minutes, but he just looked to score quick. Now, we’ve got him creating motion, controlling the flow of the match and it’s fitting him a lot better.”

In addition to Dustin Bruce, Casillas gets tested by 157-pounder Cael Hickok and undersized 175-pounder Tre Beckum and even 190-pound freshman Mattheus Wynalda.

"Last year, didn’t understand how to drill hard,” Roy Bruce said. “Now, he can hand that down.”

"With Cael, going back to that body lock, with a guy that strong in the room, he’s someone you can’t just push over,” Casillas said. “It’s something to always gauge yourself off of.”

The result is Casillas is becoming a gauge himself by taking what he’s learned to the mat. There’s no reason for anxiety anymore. Chain wrestling, linking moves together, and staying one step ahead.

“A big part of it is just confidence,” he said. “You can practice all these moves, but if you don’t have the confidence to use them, it’s no good for you. It's having a plan on the mat, knowing what you’re going to go for, knowing what your first move is going to be."

As for his last move, well, Casillas knows exactly what he’s shooting for at the end of the season.

“I’ve always wanted a very specific goal,” he said. “In the wrestling room, there’s a wall with the names of all the state champs and state placers. The last one was in like 2011.

“So I just want, even if I’m eight and I lose my last match, I want my name on the wall.”

Contact Jim Gordillo at jgordillo@heraldt.com and follow on X @JimGordillo.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Bloomington North wrestler Jeremiah Casillas has a lot to shoot for