Three months ago, on a wrestling mat in Paris, Columbia assistant wrestling coach Sebastian Rivera was seconds away from letting his dream slip away.
He trailed Tulga Tumur-Ochir of Mongolia in the Olympic bronze medal match 9-8 as the clock ticked down.
10. 9. 8.
That's when Rivera dug deep. He barreled into Tumur-Ochir and swung his body around him, pushing him on to the mat for the takedown with great force. He found a way, and that moment cemented his Olympic legacy — he was now officially a bronze medalist.
Rivera brings that intensity, that fire and that determination to never quit into his new role now with the Columbia wrestling program. After he returned from Paris, he joined the staff at the school led by his former Rutgers associate head coach Donny Pritzlaff, who took the head coaching job earlier this summer, alongside Jeff Buxton, who coached Rivera in Paris, and Greg Bulsak, another Rutgers All-American.
It’s a unique staff with deep Big Ten roots now working within the Ivy League, but Pritzlaff said it’s a staff he “trusts with [his] life.”
Get to know Coach Donny Pritzlaff 🤼♂️
— Columbia Wrestling (@CULionsWR)
🎥 Hear from Columbia wrestling’s new head coach as the start of the season approaches! 🦁 // 🗽
“I'm so proud of these guys, the way they develop relationships with the kids, and they push them, but they know how to pull back sometimes, and it's just really fun to watch and be around,” Pritzlaff said in an interview with krikya18.com. “Being able to work with them is is so much fun and so great, and to see them every day. Getting more comfortable with the team is only going to make us better.”
This is a group of leaders who hope to raise the level of Columbia wrestling and stay competitive in an Ivy League that has officially separated from the EIWA this season and will be competing for its own postseason conference title in March before the NCAA tournament.
ACROSS THE IVY LEAGUE: Penn | Brown | Princeton
It's a new era of Columbia wrestling, but it's one of great promise and excitement, both for the collegiate athletes and those who continue on to the senior circuit.
Coaching confidence
Columbia wrestling has had just six All-Americans in program history. Half of them earned their national recognition before junior Kai Owen was born.
So it’s not surprising that Owen said he viewed the achievement as something “out of reach” when he started as a freshman with the Lions, something “only reserved for the best kids in the country.”
But that has since started to change for the 141-pounder.
After qualifying for the NCAA tournament for the first time in 2024 and seeing his former teammate Lennox Wolak finish on the podium at 174 pounds, Owen is starting to believe that this is a path for him.
Change of scenery 🏛️ x 📸
— NCAA Wrestling (@NCAAWrestling)
The new coaching staff is only helping him with that confidence by wrestling with him in the room every day.
“I think actually getting those one-on-one reps with — specifically for me because I’m a smaller guy — Sebastian Rivera, getting those one-on-one reps with him, I think, is helping build my confidence,” Owen said. “But just getting to feel what it's like to wrestle an Olympic bronze medalist is obviously incredible, and a great opportunity for me to see where I where I am compared to such a high level athlete like him.”
THROWBACK: Inside Sebastian Rivera's mindset as a college athlete
He’s not the only one reaping these benefits. Nick Fine, a redshirt junior upperweight, said he’s seen immediate growth in both the mental and physical aspects of his wrestling since the new staff took over.
“I get the chance to wrestle with Greg Bulsack, who's also an All-American, and the confidence that you get from working with these guys is so huge,” Fine said. “And then on the other side of that, with Donnie and coach Buxton's technique, I'm working on so many things at once, and every day in practice I really feel like I've made a significant improvement.”
Returning leaders
Fine returns to the lineup this year at 184 pounds after spending a gap year training alongside teammate Cesar Alvan, a redshirt 165-pounder who qualified for the NCAA tournament as a sophomore in 2023, at the New York Regional Training Center.
He explained that while he grew as a wrestler during that period, he also benefited from the opportunity to spend more time with Alvan, someone Fine said is "a leader for a reason."
"He is incredibly hard working, but also super disciplined, in kind of every aspect. He really lives and breathes it," Fine said. "So being able to live with him for a year and just pick up a lot of things and then still be able to train, but kind of take a more reserved role as far as not competing, and kind of take a step back, it definitely gave me a lot of perspective on kind of where I was at in my in my journey to become an All-American."
The coaching staff has similarly been impressed with Alvan's leadership and the values he brings to the room each day, particularly during this coaching transition.
“We didn't really know who would step up, but Cesar seems to have the respect of the team, and a lot of people look up to him and listen to him,” Rivera said. “It’s great that there's somebody on the team that's taken that role.”
Alvan's not only regarded for his personal attributes, though. He found solid success this season on the mat, placing second at the Princeton Open after earning victories against Richie Grungo of Lehigh, Cole McComas of Rider, Sean Sefeldt of Princeton and Joseph Cangro.
Three Ivies hit the mats at the Princeton Open as the 2024-25 season got underway last weekend. In a host of great performances, 's Cesar Alvan took home the first Wrestler of the Week honor of the season. 🌿🤼♂️
— Ivy League (@IvyLeague)
📰 »
He’ll have a number of big tests ahead of him, too, as he’ll likely face No. 13 Beau Mantanona on Nov. 17 when the Lions wrestle Michigan and No. 15 Tyler Lillard in Columbia’s dual with Indiana on Nov. 21 before the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational at the start of December.
The new staff, though, is already helping Alvan believe that he’s capable of competing with the best.
“Just in this first tournament, I would go out of bounds, or the period’s over, and I'm looking over my corner, and I have these guys coaching me — it brings confidence inside of me,” Alvan said. “I could have wrestled the tournament the day after they were announced, and just them being in my corner right then and there would make me that much better.”
Getting better is the goal, and the model is there.
Alvan said he, like Owen and the rest of the Columbia team, was inspired last season watching their teammate Lennox Wolak, who now wrestles at Virginia Tech, earn All-American honors. Seeing Wolak achieve big goals has helped Alvan believe he can also finish on the podium.
ALL-AMERICANS: Meet the 80 athletes who finished on the podium last season
Wolak became the first All-American for Columbia in 10 years when took sixth at 174 pounds last season. For Alvan, the win broke a barrier for him and his teammates, showing them what’s possible. Alvan likens to this to the phenomenon known as the “Bannister Effect."
“It’s when a barrier previously thought to be unachievable is broken, a mental shift occurs, enabling many others to surpass it,” Alvan said, reading the definition of the phenomenon off of his phone. “This effect is named after the man who broke the 4-minute mile. I sent that to Lennox. Getting on that podium and becoming All-American is, you know, it's possible…but when it's not done, or at least in a while, it's very hard to kind of conceive it and think of being achievable. So Lennox being able to get that done almost opens up that door and barrier for us.”
The belief may have started with Wolak, but Alvan does not expect it to end with him.
“We’ve got two, three, four, or five, a bunch of guys on this team that are very capable of getting on that podium," Alvan said. "And I think it will definitely happen this year, in the years to come, and there's a lot of thank you to a lot of different people, but Lennox Wolak is definitely one of those names to be thankful for.”
Columbia University, 2024
— Jack McGill (@jackmcgill273)
The coaching staff wasn't willing to offer any names on which guys to watch, but Alvan and his teammates weren't afraid to shoutout their friends, including sophomore 125-pounder Sulayman Bah and senior Jack McGill at 174 pounder.
'Don’t quit. Be tough.'
What will it take to help develop these guys into All-Americans like Wolak? For Rivera, the answer is simple: Don't quit. Be tough.
“It’s hard to teach it, but I'm trying to implement it as best as I can with my wrestling a little bit,” Rivera said.
Coaching at the collegiate level may be new to Rivera, but he has a model in Pritzlaff and Buxton, mentors that have helped him reach his goals, and mentors that are now supporting him in doing the same thing for the next generation of Columbia athletes.
OLYMPIC RECAP: What we learned about each of the Olympic medalists
Pritzlaff, though, believes that just having Rivera — and his intensity — in the room, will elevate the culture of the program.
"We've been trying to get it in these guys minds that our culture is going to be a tough wrestling culture where guys like Sebastian said they're not going to quit, they're going to continue to push hard," Pritzlaff said. "And we're trying to build that, and we're trying to maintain it throughout the whole season."
Rivera's credentials, and the fact that he's still active in the sport, gives him the credibility to back up everything he says, and he's already made an impact on guys like Owen, Alvan and Fine, who are looking to make jumps this year under the new staff.
"When you think about an Olympic medalist, it's hard to even grasp how someone can get that good at times," Fine said. "And you know you almost think that there's some sort of secret method, but working with [Rivera] has been really cool because it's as simple as his intensity and...just the fact that anyone can really try to emulate that just by trying to match his intensity, not only in competition, but in practice, day in and day out."
Every practice, every rep, every second matters because, as Rivera said, “You never know when something big can happen with 10 seconds left in a match. You saw that in the Olympics."
Whether its the biggest stage in the world or the Blood Round at NCAAs or anywhere in between, this "don't quit, be tough" mantra will be part of the Columbia ethos as the team looks to add to the history books this season and fight to put athletes on podium, both at the Ivy League tournament and NCAAs, with new confidence.
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