WICHITA, Kan. – In quite possibly his final head-to-head bout of his collegiate career, Corban University Men's Wrestling redshirt junior David Rubio fought tooth and nail to scrap his way back to the NAIA National Championship Tournament and into the title bout, where he valiantly fell 2-0 in a nail-biting decision to the 157-weight class No. 1-seed in Brevin Balmeceda from Life University. Despite his narrow loss this evening, Rubio became the Warriors' first-ever three-time All-American and two-time national runner-up at two-different weight classes after making the personal sacrifice for his program to move down from the 165-weight class since last year's national title bout.
To view the final tournament results from the NAIA National Championships, click HERE.
"I'm proud of our guys with how they competed this weekend," Warriors' head coach Nolan Harris shared when asked to detail his team's most recent national championship tournament appearance. "We finished in the top twenty for the first time in school history and everyone contributed to the team total with at least one win. David wrestled a great tournament and earned his third All-American status as well as his second straight runner-up finish. He is a competitor that makes it fun for the fans and is exciting to watch. I'm so proud of his development both on and off the mat. He has done a great job leading this team and is a big factor of the great chemistry that has developed. It's exciting to know that all the participants have more eligibility and the desire to improve their finish, and I'm excited for the future of Corban Wrestling."
Rubio (32-3) was in for a fight today in his second national championship match appearance in as many seasons, as his opponent Balmeceda entered the tournament not only as the top overall seed and weight class favorite, but as a returning national champion himself after taking the 149-weight class in 2023. Balmeceda entered the tourney with only a 14-2 record from the regular season, giving Rubio and his coaching staff not much information to work with as they prepared for their matchup this evening.
From the very beginning of their bout, Rubio and Balmeceda determined early that neither of them was willing to give up that coveted three-point takedown, even when both grapplers were right on the cusp of securing the first points of the match. Facing multiple takedowns from Balmeceda in the opening period, Rubio somersaulted his way out of Balmeceda's grasp to keep himself alive despite a stall warning with twelve seconds remaining.
With Balmeceda holding the first choice, he deferred and provided Rubio with the opportunity to start down in the second period. As much as Rubio would attempt to break Balmeceda's grasp, he was unable to escape through the entire period, even despite fighting through both a caution and stall warning on Balmeceda to enter the third and final period still knotted at 0-0.
Having deferred his original choice, Balmeceda chose bottom and rather than struggling to keep him down for the next two minutes of action, Rubio elected to let him up at the start of the period knowing that he would need a takedown anyways with Balmeceda's two minutes of riding time in his favor.
On every edge of the mat, Rubio nearly clutched the takedown he needed to flip the script on Balmeceda on numerous occasions but was held off by his opponent on every attempt that came his way. One final last-ditch effort saw Rubio go airborne and over Balmeceda's back to try bringing down one of Life's multiple championship wrestlers, but unfortunately ran out of time before he could earn his first points of his second-straight national title appearance.
Corban Final Day Results:
1st Place Match - 1 Brevin Balmeceda (Life) won by decision over 3 David Rubio (Corban) (Dec 2-0)
Rubio and the Warriors amassed 25.5 team points at the national tournament to finish in nineteenth overall, their best team finish in school history and showed how they deserved to be in the NAIA Coaches' Top 20 poll all season long. They will return all but three senior student-athletes next season, with a handful of national qualifiers and conference podium placers returning to keep the program in the national eye as they prepare to make their return back to the national tournament, with perhaps a team title also in contention at the conference and NAIA level if they play their cards right.
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