NC State wrestling commit Daniel Zepeda eager to win with the Wolfpack

From the second college coaches were allowed to call Daniel Zepeda, the No. 5 wrestler in the Class of 2025, according to FloWrestling, was hearing from everyone. But there was one coach that stood out, in particular: NC State’s Pat Popolizio. 

The Wolfpack’s 12th-year coach reached out on that opening day of recruiting, and continued to have conversations with Zepeda, which soon turned into a visit to Raleigh. How did a wrestler from Gilroy, Calif., end up with a team more than 2,700 miles away on his radar?

His high school coach, Daniel Cormier — the former UFC champion and current broadcaster — wrestled with Popolizio at Oklahoma State and he vouched for his former teammate. 

“Yeah, he told me, ‘That’s where I think you should go,” Zepeda recalled. “‘I think that place is best for you.’”

Zepeda committed to the Wolfpack last week and became the fourth top-10 recruit to pledge to NC State since Popolizio took over at the helm of the program. He joins Nick Reenan, Hayden Hidlay and Dylan Fishback in that elite group of recruits.

While Zepeda will be on the opposite side of the country from home, he embraced the Wolfpack and for a wrestler with Olympic dreams, he thought Raleigh was a place he could grow the most. 

“It just felt like home to me,” Zepeda said. “I knew the coaching staff there and the people there, they’d be able to develop me into the best wrestler I could be.”

That distance between home and NC State is actually part of his plan of becoming the best version of himself. 

“Honestly, even though it’s far from home, I know that’s what it takes to develop,” Zepeda said. “You just gotta get away from home.”

Zepeda visited Oregon State, Michigan State and Stanford before his trip to NC State. While he was expecting to make one more visit before deciding on his college choice, Zepeda said he knew NC State was the place he would end up at. 

But Zepeda has two years before he dons an NC State singlet on the mat at Reynolds Coliseum. And in the meantime, he is all about business. 

Zepeda is focused on improving to the point he is moving up from 138 to 150-pound weight class this year in California to join a loaded group of wrestlers. The current national No. 1 in 138 is walking into a weight class that has FloWrestling’s No. 2, No. 6 and No. 7 nationally-ranked wrestlers at 150.

That move was purely developmental to face better competition, while he will also likely wrestle at 149 in college, so it will help him get a head start on that. 

“That was actually my decision because I’m small enough to still go down, but I need that challenge to be constantly improving and just getting better,” Zepeda said. “If you want to be the best, you’ve got to go out there and beat the best people. Why not move up in weight and wrestle better people?”

The self-described offensive wrestler said he likes to “put on a show and go score points” on the mat each night. He is able to score on the mat, but Zepeda said he wants to continue to grow in that part of the sport. 

“I want to get a lot better at scoring points,” Zepeda said. “Points are the best way to win, and it’s the most entertaining wrestling to watch. A lot of people like to see a lot of scoring, and that’s what I like to do, so I’ve been working a lot on scoring from any position.”

With his move to a heavier weight class, Zepeda said it will require more time in the weight room, but it also forces him to lock in on a daily basis. He can not coast at this weight class like he could have at 138. 

“Everything has to be real focused and I have to be on top of every training session,” Zepeda said. “If I were to go down to my normal weight, I could afford to slack off and still win. But that’s not what I want. I want to know that I have to do the right things to go out there and win.”

Though his college wrestling days are a couple years down the road, Zepeda picked the Wolfpack since the team is a national contender now — currently ranked No. 2 in the country behind Penn State. 

Zepeda wants to continue the Wolfpack’s tradition of winning and its pursuit of an NCAA team national championship when he arrives in Raleigh. 

“I’m super excited to go out there and try to win a team title,” Zepeda said. “I know the team’s already really good now, so when I get out there and we get a few more guys out there, we can keep the ball rolling. … I’m going out there so we can win. I don’t want to get second place.”