Wrestling coaches and players are constantly surprised by his wrestling style -- strange hand movements, takedowns in weird positions. But these same people would take him on their team any day.
Rocco Caponi, a freshman wrestler for the Virginia Cavaliers, is not only known for his inordinary style, but also for his inordinary results.
The 6-foot-2-inch, 174-pound wrestler from Uniontown, Ohio, is tied for the team lead with 19 overall wins and six victories in dual meet play in only his first year of college wrestling.
"Unorthodox is the best way to describe him," Virginia coach Lenny Bernstein said. "When he gets in on the legs, he'll do things that are a little harder to describe -- one of those things you learn from experience, not necessarily things we teach them in the room."
Caponi said he acquired his funky wrestling style from his high school system where he learned a handful of unique moves. He has always tried to pick up something from every coach he's worked with and he chooses to take different parts of different moves from various coaches.
"The high school I went to, the coaches weren't the traditional coaches -- they didn't teach the traditional style," Caponi said. "From what I hear I tend to do a lot of weird hand movements and I tend to get takedowns in weird positions, where I'm standing on my head or something."
His unorthodox moves are not the only thing that Caponi has going for him. The freshman from Saint Vincent-Saint Mary's high school has amazing personal drive and a supremely high emotional level. Watch one practice and it's not surprising to see Caponi storm out of the wrestling room slamming doors and yelling so loudly that people in the nearby offices check to make sure nothing is wrong.
Bernstein said his high emotions stem from a high school career that got off to a rocky start.
"He's very highly competitive; he doesn't like to lose," Bernstein said. "I think part of it was, he was horrendous when he was in the seventh, eighth, ninth grade. Basically he was begging really good guys to work out with him... He finally reached a certain level where he's worked for everything he has. You can't very easily take that away from him."
While Caponi would agree that it is virtually impossible to shake his confidence, his personal drive to be the best wrestler in his weight class is also unwavering.
"I've always thought no matter where I went, I was going to be a national champion," he said. "If I don't wrestle up to my expectations I get very angry with myself... It keeps me motivated. If I just think I'm the perfect wrestler, I'm not going to have to work harder."
Despite his amazing emotional level in practice, when Caponi wrestles in meets he is surprisingly relaxed -- so relaxed, in fact, that he has a hard time remembering specifics of his matches.
"During matches, I don't feel any emotion," he said. "I have a strict ritual of how I warm up -- it's all meant to forget about everything else. When I actually wrestle, I don't have a single thought in my head... I don't wrestle well emotionally. I'm just focusing on slowly clearing every thought from my mind. When I wrestle, I don't remember wrestling."
That is unfortunate, because what Caponi would remember is one of the most impressive starts for a freshman that Bernstein and senior captain Will Durkee have witnessed.
"He's probably one of the best recruits we've had here at least since I've been here," said Durkee, who is tied with Caponi for the team lead in dual meet victories. "I think he's got the potential to be a multiple time All-American. And if he works hard he'll definitely have a chance at competing for a national title."
Caponi's technique may look unusual to some, but based on the results so far, maybe more wrestlers will be tailoring their style to more unconventional means.
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