Commitment paying off for James Wood wrestler Nuss

WINCHESTER — James Wood junior Chris Nuss had never participated in an organized sport until eighth grade, though he says he “basically wrestled my brother every day, who’s two years older than me, since I was born.”

That was just brotherly roughhousing. As evidenced by the commitment Nuss has made to organized wrestling since joining the Frederick County Middle School team as an eighth-grader, it’s clear there ain’t nothing like the real thing to the 138-pound standout.

The two-day Class 4 state tournament begins at 10 a.m. today at Tuscarora High School in Leesburg, and Nuss (29-4 with 15 pins) will be a contender to place high after taking second at the always challenging Class 4 Northwestern and Region 4C tournaments.

Nuss went 1-2 at 132 pounds in his debut state tournament performance last year — he wrestled at less than 100 percent after suffering a right shoulder sprain at the Region 4C tournament — but James Wood coach Cory Crenshaw believes last year’s experience will give him a much better chance to succeed this weekend.

Based on his improvement over the years and his dedication to his craft, one thing’s for sure — if Nuss doesn’t win a state title this weekend, it won’t be due to lack of preparation.

“Basically since eighth grade, I haven’t stopped wrestling,” said Nuss on Monday, not long after grappling with teammate Aidan Barton in James Wood’s wrestling room during practice. “There is no offseason. The longest break I took was a month because I tore some muscle in my back in ninth grade.”

Nuss decided to give wrestling a try in eighth grade in the fall of 2016 to be with friends like Barton, but he quickly found out he was “super far behind.” Many of his teammates had been wrestling for at least two years, and Nuss thinks he won about five matches out of 15. It didn’t help that the 99-pound Nuss sometimes had to wrestle people in the 113-pound class because he couldn’t beat people in his weight class and the one above him.

After the season Nuss joined the Willie Walters Wrestling Club, then soon after in the winter of 2017 he also added another Winchester club, Brickhouse Wrestling, to his training regimen. In an email, Nuss’s mother Christa said Brickhouse was for elite wrestlers, and Chris wasn’t elite. But she said Chris told the Brickhouse staff that despite his lack of training, he’d make up for it by working harder than anyone else in the room.

Nuss said Brickhouse’s Thad Walker, a former Warren County High School wrestler, was the coach who got him to truly commit to the sport. Nuss came to appreciate the wrestling skills he taught, and his intensity.

“He would say things he wouldn’t actually do but threaten you with, like, ‘I’m going to face-punch you if you don’t do this right,’” said Nuss, whose training partner was friend and Sherando 145-pound junior standout Heath Rudolph. “I realized this was serious. He was a really good guy, a straight-up guy, and he helped me a lot.”

Nuss increased his workload in the spring by also going to the Red Lion Wrestling Club that operates out of Handley. With Brickhouse in the summer, Nuss had two 90-minute sessions a week with former Sherando star and current Virginia Tech heavyweight wrestler John Borst. Nuss also went to a team camp at Virginia Tech.

Once school season rolled around, Nuss wrestled about 20 JV matches for James Wood his freshman year. He lost only match, which came in the finals of the JV Super Regionals to Skyline’s Logan Maiatico.

Crenshaw was impressed with what he saw from Nuss that year.

“I think ninth-grade was kind of that wake-up call,” Crenshaw said. “He wanted to be on varsity, but there were kids in front of him who were a little bit older, a little more experienced. But he never gave up. All freshman year he was really dominant at the JV level, and it kind of pushed his desire to do more work.”

In the spring of his freshman year in 2018, Nuss joined the Panhandle Freestyle Club Wrestling Club out of Musselman High School in Inwood, W.Va. (high school wrestling is folkstyle). Once again, Nuss came to appreciate the intensity. There was no face-punching at Musselman either, but Nuss did get worked over by training with Musselman’s Joey Miller, a two-time state champion for the Applemen who graduated last year.

“He’d rip off my face every single day,” Nuss said. “I thought he was going to break my arm every single day. But he stopped me from being so passive.”

Nuss followed that up over the summer by attending camps at Penn State, Virginia Tech and at the Olympic training site at Northern Michigan University for Greco-Roman wrestling.

In the fall of 2018, Nuss began working at the Shenandoah Valley Wrestling Club in Harrisonburg with Jeremy Whitmore, a physical therapist and strength and conditioning specialist who also had a decorated high school wrestling and amateur MMA careers.

Nuss started out making three trips to see Whitmore and continues to see him now, usually on Sundays. Sherando’s Timmy Dieter, the 132-pound Class 4 champion last year, gave a lot of credit to Whitmore for his improvement as a senior.

“He’s a very technical guy,” Nuss said. “Every Sunday after a tournament I’ll usually go there and fix myself up have him explain to me what I’m doing wrong.”

Nuss earned the starting position for James Wood’s varsity as a sophomore. He went 35-15 with 16 pins and was one of eight Colonels to qualify for the state tournament.

That’s the type of season most people would take in a heartbeat, but Nuss ended the season frustrated. It was difficult for him to not be at full strength after the region tournament.

And while he was more comfortable with punishing his opponents physically compared to his freshman year, he said the state tournament made him realize that he wasn’t taking enough chances to score points from neutral. Nuss was eliminated at states in a match in which he trailed 7-0 before scoring six points in the final minute to make it 7-6.

Starting in the spring, Nuss became stronger through his two-to-three weightlifting sessions per week with Mike Doleman of Winchester Boxing. And Nuss said he became more aggressive through the work he put in over the summer with Dieter’s brother Joe Jes sen, a two-time state champion and 2012 Millbrook graduate who is now the wrestling coach at Shark Pit Jiu Jitsu in Winchester.

“He weighs about 200 pounds,” Nuss said. “He would let me get in a shot, but if I didn’t do it right, I was going to get crushed. Since I got so confident taking on a 200-pound man, I figured I could take on someone who was 138.”

Just prior to the high school season, Nuss took pride in his performance during an eight-person competition in his basement, which has a wrestling mat. You had to record a takedown of your opponent to stay on the mat, and he stayed on for two hours straight. Four of them were high school wrestlers. The other three were his older brother Matthew (a 2019 James Wood graduate who goes to Lord Fairfax Community College) and his MMA friends, each of whom was 18 or 19.

“Only reason I got out was because I got kicked [in the groin] and my friend hit me in the nose and I started bleeding,” Nuss said. “I took each one of them down about 20 times.”

All of Nuss’ work — his summer also included a fourth-place finish at the Virginia freestyle tournament that qualified him for the Fargo (N.D.) nationals, which Nuss decided not to go to — has paid off for James Wood this season. After being hesitant to drop down and move forward to take shots last year, he’s done it on a consistent basis this year.

“I think the biggest thing with him this year is his level of aggressiveness,” Crenshaw said. “If we can go out there and secure the first points of the match, I think that sets the tone, sets the pace for a lot of things to come.

“I think with a lot of kids this year that’s what we’ve done. We’ve made them go out there and wrestle our style of wrestling. Chris is doing the things he wants to do and is successful with.”

Nuss’ only losses this year are to Morgan Robinson of Class 3 Skyline and to Fauquier’s Gino Camarca, whom he’s fallen to three times since beating Camarca 4-2 on Jan. 15. Camarca pinned Nuss in the finals of both the Class 4 Northwestern District (second period) and Region 4C (third period) tournaments.

Nuss is 2-5 over the last two seasons against Camarca, and he figures all the effort he’s put in to be more aggressive on his feet could be the difference if they meet again in the state finals, though Nuss will have his work cut out for them just to make it there. For example, he could face last year’s 138-pound state runner-up Ty Chittum of Great Bridge in the quarterfinals.

“It’s very frustrating [losing frequently to the same opponent],” Nuss said. “With Gino, the first one to score wins when we wrestle. That’s how it goes every single time.”

Nuss is motivated by his losses to Camarca and last year’s state tournament. He also wants to give everything he has to honor the teammates who are no longer wrestling after being eliminated at regionals.

Crenshaw is looking forward to seeing Nuss perform.

“He wasn’t 100 percent last year, but he still wrestled tough and hard,” Crenshaw said. “Last year was a good learning experience for him, and I think a year of knowing what to expect is going to set him up for a lot more success this year.”

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