Will bigger be better for ISU wrestler Yonger Bastida?

AMES — He’s aggressive, explosive and relentless.

But now Iowa State wrestler Yonger Bastida has added a fresh and welcomed wrinkle to his repertoire: Comfortability.

“My mind is now on just one thing,” Bastida, a two-time NCAA qualifier who will move up from 197 pounds to heavyweight this season, said at a recent Tailgate Tour stop. “That’s training right now and this is the time for that.

“Give me the work. I’m ready to do that. It’s me. It’s more of my energy. Now I’m feeling my 100 percent energy.”

Bastida had to cut weight to stay at 197 for the Cyclones and now he can focus solely on that aforementioned “work.” He hopes to level out eventually at about 240 pounds, which is a bit light for a heavyweight, but Bastida makes up for that with his ability to land multiple shots with speed, skill and agility.

“He really wants to go heavyweight and he’s weighing 230 already,” ISU head coach Kevin Dresser said. “And I’ve always been one of those coaches, I learned years ago, that if you make a guy (cut) weight it usually blows up in your face. We didn’t make Yonger go 197. I think Yonger wanted to go 197 last year because we had such a good guy in Sam Schuyler at heavyweight.

“So I think he did it just because he knew that would be the best team for us, but I know deep down last summer he really wanted to go heavyweight and 197 was a struggle for him. He got dinged up with ribs so it just wasn’t a good finish for him. But you saw it, when he’s on he’s dynamic, so he’ll be dynamic this year, I think.”

It stands to reason. Bastida, a former Pan-American Junior gold medalist, excelled at freestyle wrestling before committing to Iowa State in 2019. Adapting to folkstyle wrestling led to a long learning curve, so the Trinidad, Cuba, native essentially wrestled on training wheels in his first three seasons with the Cyclones. Now those wheels are fully off and Bastida’s knowledge and technique have finally caught up with his abundance of talent.

“I feel like everybody’s gonna see me now,” Bastida said. “The real me. Feeling good, feeling like how I was in 2019.”

That’s where that regained sense of comfort comes in. Constantly cutting weight took a big toll on the 2019 Junior World silver medalist, but that wasn’t his only stumbling block. Bastida still hadn’t fully mastered English in his first few seasons in Ames and developing the skills and techniques that lead to success in folkstyle wrestling was still very much a work in progress, as well.

“Now I can worry about just school and wrestling,” he said. “No cutting weight, no nothing. Now I think I will be more focused on my wrestling career.”

If Bastida can make the planned leap from NCAA qualifier to All-American, that bodes well for a deep Cyclone team bolstered by David Carr’s return to the wrestling room. Carr, the 2021 NCAA champion at 157 pounds and three-time top-three finisher at nationals, helped ISU achieve its best finish since 2013 at last March’s NCAA meet (11th). The four-time All-American finished second at 165 to Missouri’s Keegan O’Toole.

“He’s a huge leader,” Dresser said of Carr. “He’s a great role model. He’s almost like an assistant coach at this point. He’s a sixth year guy. He teaches our guys a lot technically. He teaches our guys a lot mentally — and then he’s here to win another national championship.

“He’s gonna go on record and say I want to fix what happened this year in the finals, and he’s excited about that challenge.”

So is Bastida, who knows simply not having to cut weight won’t magically allow him to produce the desired results. If he’s going to ascend from merely wrestling in the NCAA Championships to a spot on the medal stand, that newfound comfortability must be augmented by fresh challenges that spur growth.

“I still have to learn some stuff,” he said. “You always keep learning every day in wrestling and in life, too.”

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