By Gail Wood
At the same instant, he’s both dad and coach.
And it’s a moment Tony Prentice, as wrestling coach at Tumwater, embraces, relishes with pride. He gets to bring family to work.
“I love it,” Tony said. “I get to coach my son.”
Riley Prentice, who simply calls his coach “dad” at practice, appreciates his dad being around. It’s the extra prod he says he sometimes needs.
“It’s nice, I guess,” Riley said with a smile. “But it’s tough. He pushes me harder. He expects more out of me because he knows what I can do.”
Which happens to be a lot. Riley, who at 170 pounds is built like a brick house, won a state championship at 160 pounds last season, beating the defending state champ in the semifinals and then pulling out a dramatic 2-1 triple overtime win in the finals against a previously undefeated opponent. That one point, which came with eight seconds left in regulation on a penalty for clinching his hands together, was the only point Riley gave up in his four matches at state.
A three-time state placer, Riley finished 32-2 last season, losing only to two eventual state champs. He lost to the 1A and 3A champs. But he beat the eventual 4A champ. Riley’s opponent in the state finals suffered his only loss of the season in the state finals, finishing 33-1.
Now, with a career 102 wins in high school, Riley is within reach of becoming the school’s all-time winningest wrestler. Off to a 3-0 start, Riley needs another 30 wins to pass Tanner Weiks to become the school’s all-time leader in wins.
“He’s got a shot at it,” Tony said.
Tumwater’s team is filled with family subplots similar to the Prentice connection. There’s also the intrigue of the Nolan brother challenge.
Last season, the Nolan brothers met in the 2A state consolation finals at 120 pounds, with Cameron beating James 5-4, giving him family bragging rights and fifth in state. James, now a senior and a year older than his brother, finished sixth. It might be the only time in school history that brothers met in a state match.
“It was pretty tough,” James said at a recent Tumwater practice. “He’s a tough opponent. I don’t really like the idea of wrestling him.”
The Nolan brothers weren’t the only ones uncomfortable with the match-up.
“My mom didn’t really want us to wrestle,” James said. “When we did wrestle, she was pulling for both of us.”
There will be no rematch. Cameron, now a junior, moved up a weight class to 126 and James is at 120.
“We still wrestle each other in practice,” James said.
But not in invitationals. Last season, the Nolan brothers met four times. Cameron won the first time at a tournament. James then beat his younger brother at subregionals. Cameron won the following week at regionals and then at state.
“As the younger brother, I had nothing to lose,” Cameron said. “The mentality is different from any other match. It’s the opponent I never want to lose to.”
As kids, James was often the instigator, pouncing on his brother as he watched TV and wrestling.
“He’d sneak up on me,” Cameron said with a smile. “He’d always get in trouble for picking on me.”
It wasn’t until last year that the two brothers first met on the mat in a regular match. They admitted wrestling against each other was hard, but it wasn’t a wedge between them. There was no carryover.
“Of course I was upset, but I wouldn’t be pissed at him,” James said. “I had fun.”
So, the relationships are obvious – they’re family. There’s a father (Tony Prentice), a son (Riley Prentice) and two look-a-like brothers (Cameron and James Nolan).
And yet that blood relationship makes their roles on Tumwater’s wrestling team a little complicated.
Riley is the son with this going to-make-it-happen drive. Tony is the dad with the perfect mentor persona and the impressive athletic resume to add clout to his words. Tony also wrestled at Tumwater, placing sixth as a junior in the early 1990s. He was undefeated his senior year when he dislocated his elbow at subregionals, knocking him out of the tournament and the season. He went on to pitch at the Portland State University and played one season in the San Francisco Giants’ minor league organization after signing as a free agent.
He went from Single A to Triple A that season, then called it quits.
“I thought it was more important for me to be a dad,” said Tony, who had one child at the time. “I didn’t get a million dollars to sign or anything. I got a glove, a bag, a coat and a pair of cleats.”
Tony’s older son, Patrick, won a state championship his senior year at Tumwater and went on to wrestle at the University of Northern Arizona. So, Riley, with a dad and a brother who were successful in sports at Tumwater, has some living up to do.
But he’s not intimidated. He’s even raised the bar.
Riley, who was the the Evergreen Conference’s defensive MVP in football as a linebacker this season, doesn’t just want to be a repeat state champ and his school’s all-time leader in wins. He also wants to be his school’s first high school All-American. He then wants to wrestle in college.
“Riley’s always been that kid that’s tough,” Tony said. “Even as a little kid. He never got pinned. The one time he did get pinned he was so distraught he didn’t care about anything else.”
So, with this determined grit, Riley sets ambitious goals and works hard. It’s been a winning formula.
