The goal is a national championship, served on a Trey
CORVALLIS — Trey Munoz lies on a couch in the lounge area for Oregon State wrestling at its training complex, leggings from what appears to be ski pants covering his legs.
It turns out they are compression boots, a medical device designed to help an elite athlete with recovery.
“It fills up with air and decompresses you,” Munoz explains. “It restricts your blood, then opens it up and increases the blood flow in your legs.”
Munoz uses them once or twice a week. He also submerges to the neck in a cold tub for three minutes two or three times a week. All in the pursuit of gaining every possible edge in muscle recovery.
Oregon State’s best wrestler will defend his 184-pound title in the Pac-12 Championships Sunday at Gill Coliseum.
“I’m looking to win in dominant fashion,” says Munoz, a junior from Mission Viejo, Calif., who has claimed the Pac-12 crown in each of the last two seasons. “The postseason is where it matters. (Opponents) are going to come out firing on all cylinders and I’m going to have to come out at another level.”
That’s just the start, however, of what Munoz hopes to accomplish this season.
“Trey can wrestle with anybody in the country,” Oregon State coach Chris Pendleton says. “He has aspirations of being an NCAA champion. He has shown he can do it.”
Munoz thought it might happen last season in the NCAA Championships at Tulsa, where he reached the semifinals and faced No. 1 seed Parker Keckeisen from Northern Iowa. There Munoz aggravated an MCL knee injury sustained earlier in the season, which played a role in a 5-1 loss. He was forced into a medical forfeit in the fifth-place match and finished sixth, ending the campaign with a 27-4 record.
“Every kid dreams about being a national champion,” Munoz says. “I put myself into position to do that. To get hurt in the semis and lose that chance … it was hard, for sure.”
Munoz rehabbed the knee and had surgery on an injured thumb during the offseason. He is healthy now and eager for another crack at a national title in Kansas City, Mo., from March 21-23. Keckeisen, incidentally, is currently the nation’s top-ranked wrestler in the 184-pound weight class.
Trey has additional motivation. His father, Mark Munoz, was the 197-pound NCAA champion for Oklahoma State in 2001.
“I like to compete with my dad,” Trey says. “I have two chances left. I would like to be a two-time national champ just to one-up him. That’s just the competitor in me.”
Mark Munoz was a senior when Pendleton was a freshman at Oklahoma State. Pendleton won NCAA titles at 174 in 2004 and ’05. Munoz wound up being a mentor and role model for his younger teammate.
“I first met Mark when my high school team attended a summer camp and he was one of our clinicians,” Pendleton says. “So I was well aware of him when I arrived at Oklahoma State.
“You walk into the wrestling room as an impressionable freshman and there is a guy ranked No. 1 in the country. I fell in line and studied him from a distance — how he approached the sport, how he handled himself, how he came in early and left late. Everything he did rubbed off on me.”
The senior Munoz would eventually have an eight-year career as a mixed-martial arts competitor. Since then, he has operated a gym, coached high school wrestling and trained UFC fighters.
Trey’s mother, Kristi, was also a big-time athlete at Oklahoma State. She was a third baseman on a softball team that placed third in the NCAA Championships.
While Pendleton was in college, he sometimes babysat with Trey and the oldest of his three sisters.
Says Chris: “I have vivid memories of walking with a toddler and a newborn from the school’s daycare center to the wrestling room and handing them to Mark.”
Trey followed his father into wrestling and compiled a 60-0 record and won the CIF state championship at 174 as a senior at Trabuco Hills High. He spurned scholarship offers from Oklahoma State, Northern Iowa and Minnesota to sign with Arizona State, where Pendleton was an assistant coach.
“Coach Pendleton was a mentor figure for me,” Munoz says. “Plus, I felt Arizona State was a place where I could grow in all areas of my life. I wanted to grow academically, athletically and spiritually.”
Munoz redshirted his first year at ASU. Meanwhile, Pendleton got the job at Oregon State. As a redshirt freshman, Munoz was runner-up in the Pac-12 Tournament and qualified for the NCAAs. Then he transferred to OSU.
“I loved Tempe, but it just wasn’t the right fit for me,” he says. “I followed Coach Pendleton here. We have that bond. He believes in me. I believe in him, too.”
The fit has been close to perfect in his three years wrestling under Pendleton at Oregon State, where he has a career record of 66-12.
Trey Munoz hopes to successfully win his third straight 184-pound crown in the Pac-12 Championships Sunday at Gill Coliseum (courtesy OSU sports communications)
“Coach Pendleton coaches the Oklahoma State wrestling style and I have been raised in it,” Munoz says. “It is a lot of outside wrestling, movement, fakes, keeping busy with my hands and feet. It is an aggressive style, for sure. He has shown me a lot. He is a great technician — one of the best I have ever been around. Whenever he works with me one-on-one it’s a privilege.”
Munoz also speaks highly of assistant coaches Josh Rhoden, Nate Engel and Cory Crooks.
“Coach Rhoden is one of the best talkers you will ever meet,” Munoz says. “He is good at encouraging you and making sure you are on the right track. Coach Engel is the drill sergeant, the one who keeps everybody in line. He definitely keeps me in line. Coach Cory will do anything for you. We have to have one of the most well-rounded staffs in the country.”
Munoz, 16-3 this season, has beaten three ranked wrestlers this season, including No. 2 Bernie Truax of Penn State. Two of his losses came in early December. Iowa State’s Will Feldkamp, now ranked eighth, pinned him, and North Carolina State’s Dylan Fishback, now No. 13, beat him 9-6 at the Cliff Keen Invitational in Las Vegas. His other loss came to No. 2 Dustin Plott of Oklahoma State, who beat him 4-3 in a dual on Jan. 21.
“I had never wrestled any of them before,” Munoz says. “Hopefully, I’ll see them in the national tournament and get them back. It has been a pretty good season overall. I was able to learn from my losses. My game keeps improving. I am continuing to get better.”
Pendleton believes Munoz can be Oregon State’s first NCAA champion since Les Gutches in 1996.
“Trey is a natural athlete and an incredibly talented technician,” the OSU coach says. “Sometimes, he puts too much stress on himself trying to live up to accomplishments of two parents who were amazing athletes and are amazing people.
“He is a kid who hasn’t unlocked his full potential — the kind of guy you can build a championship program around.”
What does Munoz most like about wrestling?
“The individuality of it,” he says. “You don’t have to rely on your coaches or teammates. It is just you stepping out there on the mat. You can’t blame anything on anybody else but yourself. It is all about your preparation — your nutrition, the reps you get in weight room and practice room. It is everything leading up to the actual match.”
Munoz says he has enjoyed his time in Corvallis.
“I love it here,” he says. “The Northwest is one of my favorite places to be in the spring and summertime. I have a good group of friends. I love our wrestling program.”
Munoz, a 3.6 student in high school, says he carries a 3.2 GPA in college. He will graduate this term with degrees in education and chemistry and a minor in leadership. His plan is to complete his Masters in science education in winter term of 2025 after wrestling his senior season.
Trey lives with four teammates — Brandon Kaylor, Justin Rademacher, Ricky Bell and Grant Gambrell — in a house across from Reser Stadium. Another close companion is Scarlett, his eight-month-old mutt.
“She is adorable,” he says. “I love playing around with her.”
Munoz is a member of Grace City Church in Corvallis.
“I try to attend services every weekend when we’re not traveling,” says Munoz, who co-leads a weekly bible study for OSU student-athletes.
Munoz laments the serious injury that cost the Beavers their second-best wrestler, 174-pound Travis Wittlake, in early January. Wittlake — a four-time state champion at Marshfield High — sustained leg and vertebrae fractures when his truck fell on him after a jack gave way while he was working on it. Munoz and Wittlake wrestled each other nearly every practice.
“It left us all in shock,” Munoz says. “He was one of my best wrestling partners I have ever had. It is hard to lose that guy, one of the core people on your team and someone who has been so special to wrestling in this state. He is a fighter, though, and a lot of guys are keeping in contact with him.”
The loss of Wittlake — along with 149-pounder Noah Tolentino early in the season — leaves Oregon State vulnerable in its defense of the Pac-12 team championship on Sunday.
“If everybody wrestles to the best of his ability, we are in there for the team race,” Munoz says. “Everybody has to have some heart and scrap.”
Munoz will lead the charge. His coaches can’t think of a better person to do it.
“Trey does everything right,” Engel says. “He does great in school. He does everything right in practice. He puts the work in and leads by example. It is no secret why he is one of the best college wrestlers in the country.”
And a quality guy, the coaches say.
“If my three boys grows up to be half the man he is,” Engel says, “I will be a lucky dad.”
“He is a great kid,” Pendleton says. “The kind of young man every father hopes his daughter marries.”
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