DAILY PILOT HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETE OF THE WEEK:

If Pedro Lopez ever needed a reversal in life, wrestling gave him that chance.

As a student at TeWinkle Middle School, his grades began dropping faster than a wrestler trying to cut weight before weigh-ins.

“I really didn’t try,” Lopez said. “I had two, three classes [I was] failing per semester. I had nothing to do. I’d rather do this. I’d rather do that.”

In need of direction, a friend at the Boys & Girls Club Lopez frequented in Costa Mesa suggested wrestling. The first thing Lopez pictured was those strapping professional wrestlers on WWE.

He thought, when was the last time you saw a 4-foot-9 wrestler on TV? But the friend described the sport, the real one with no shenanigans.

“He told me, ‘It’s perfect for you since little guys face little guys and big guys face big guys,’ ” Lopez said.

Intrigued by the opportunity, the friend talked to Estancia High wrestling coach Brian Burgess. In his second year, Burgess took anyone willing to endure the sport’s brutal workouts.

Soon after Lopez met Burgess, and a month before the season, Burgess already had the freshman hooked.

“I’m like, ‘All right! Finally I get to lift some weights,’ ” said Lopez, who at the time weighed way below the sport’s lowest weight class of 103 pounds.

“During PE I had been running the mile every day, the running didn’t really seem hard. I was like, ‘Oh! This is not that tough.’ We got to leave at 3 [p.m.], but then the season came. We started leaving around 5, 5:30, 6 sometimes. I was like, ‘Oh man! I hope I don’t fall behind on my homework.’ ”

If the grades fell, so did Lopez on the mat. Understanding that he had to maintain at least a 2.0 grade-point average to be eligible to compete, he hit the books.

Another motivator was his older sister, Adriana, someone Lopez described as a 4.0 student at Estancia. Lopez said she promised to buy him a car if his grades were better than hers after she graduated in 2003.

“They’re good,” Lopez said of his grades. “But they aren’t as good as hers.”

That’s OK to Lopez in his senior year. The grades are up, three A’s and a couple of B’s are what he said he has right now, and so are his wrestling skills.

The only thing that has remained the same all four years at Estancia is his wrestling weight. That in itself is a challenge, a rarity in high school wrestling.

Lopez tried to move up and compete at 112 pounds this year. He quickly learned after the team’s first tournament, the Edison Bash, that the decision made no sense. In his last match during the event, Lopez’s first words to Burgess were, “I’m not a 112-pounder.”

“I was kind of glad he was able to realize that on his own,” said Burgess in his fifth year as coach. “He’s too small for that [class]. He kind of got handled a little bit it. He got down to his fighting weight. He looks a lot stronger, where he belongs.”

This year, Lopez (12-4) made sure he fit in the 28th annual Estancia New Year’s Classic.

A year ago, ringworm forced him to sit out the two-day event. The only things he remembers is seeing Efren Alvarez be the lone Eagle to place and nearly 20 ringworm all over his upper body.

All is in the past now, with Lopez showing his coach that he was clear of the skin infection and that his performance was better than Alvarez’s fourth-place finish, an accomplishment with Alvarez going on to be Burgess’ first league champion.

Lopez went 5-1 and placed third Saturday, boosting the team’s confidence and his own. With only a handful of varsity wrestlers, Burgess is hoping Lopez can accomplish something down the road that will benefit the program.

Unlike other top wrestlers at other programs, Lopez has to practice against a freshman daily. Lopez is cool with it because it allows him to teach the younger wrestlers. The obstacle is something he said he won’t allow get in the way. He has big plans.

“I hope like last year we have everyone going to CIF again,” he said of the Southern Section event after the Garden Grove League championships. “Personally, getting first in league, third or fourth in CIF, and going on to the Masters, where I’m hoping to place and go to state.

“Since [Burgess has] been here, no one’s even gone past CIF. I want to be that first guy.”

Now there’s something that can never be reversed.

DAVID CARRILLO PEÑALOZA may be reached at (714) 966-4612 or at [email protected].