ASU wrestler Brandon Courtney ends collegiate career as Pac-12 Wrestler of the Year
Arizona State wrestler Brandon Courtney has overcome doubts throughout his wrestling career, but one of his greatest came when he was just eight years old.
Already three years into the sport that his dad loved, Courtney felt ready to move on.
“I said, you know what, dad, I think I’m done and I want to do something else,” Courtney recalled. “And he goes, no. So I said, alright, let’s keep doing it.”
The persistence from then paid off as Courtney became one of the top wrestlers in ASU’s rich history and won Pac-12 Wrestler of the Year recently.
“I’m so glad I stayed in it and I’m so glad he pushed me because of where I’m at today,” Courtney said.
Ups and downs
Courtney’s final season at ASU wasn’t a fast track to the NCAA Championships. The 125-pounder has qualified for the championships the last four years, but his final opportunity was in jeopardy. Injuries throughout the season cost him several starts and took a toll on him physically and mentally.
In what could have been the final tournament of his college career, he lost his Pac-12 championship match. Still , he qualified as the runner-up.
With everything that had happened to him, he had doubts.
“Sometimes I thought I wasn’t going to come back just because the injury was going to be too much or I wouldn’t be the same or I wouldn’t be 100% going out there and wrestling,” Courtney said. “It was a bunch of stuff with the starting lineup I had to deal with and a lot of controversy, but I bounced back and that’s what I do.”
To say that Courtney didn’t have a linear path in his wrestling career is an understatement. Coming in as a three-time state champion from Goodyear Desert Edge, Courtney didn’t make the ASU lineup in his first year. That served as his wake-up call.
His years following had rocky moments, including COVID-19 uncertainty within the sports world during his third year. However, he started to gain momentum throughout the adversity.
“I would honestly say, getting my butt kicked a lot and coming back,” Courtney said. “No one likes that feeling and no one likes to lose. It's either you flip the switch or it turns on you. I talked to the coaches, I figured it out, I studied what I needed to work on, what I sucked at, what I was good at, what I needed to get better at and I went from there.”
Courtney went 80-15 over four seasons at ASU and was the national runner-up in 2021. He joined a small group of ASU wrestlers when he became the fifth wrestler to be named an All-American four times. The last time an ASU wrestler achieved that honor was Eric Larkin in 2003.
Forging a new path
Courtney lived out his dreams of making it to the same tournament he watched in his childhood. He placed a career-best third in 2022.
Now, Courtney has his sights set on going for another dream: the 2024 Olympics. He’ll join the list of other Olympic-caliber athletes training with Sunkist Kids Wrestling Club in Tempe. It will mean a return to freestyle wrestling — the international style of wrestling.
As he trains for his dreams, he’s already begun helping others from the West Valley achieve their dreams. Courtney and Josh Kramer, a fellow ASU and Desert Edge High School alum, recently started their own club, Way Out West Wrestling, in Avondale.
“The wrestling scene here in Arizona, it’s definitely had some few struggles along the years,” Courtney said. “But I know for a fact that Arizona is on the map right now. We’re getting better as a state and as a whole. We took fourth two years in a row and this year, we only took five to NCAAs and had four All-Americans. We’re definitely raising the notch and I think people should be worried about Arizona wrestling as a whole.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Brandon Courtney ends collegiate career as Pac-12 Wrestler of the Year
