STILLWATER – Oklahoma State leaves for Kansas City on Tuesday and the 2024 NCAA Wrestling Championships. The Cowboys, like all the teams except one, are wrestling for second place. As a team, Penn State looks dominant again. However, there is one Oklahoma State wrestler with serious unfinished business. Daton Fix is the first ever five-time Big 12 champion at 133 pounds. That is a mark likely to never be challenged with the COVID extra year of competition no longer pushing wrestlers and any other athletes to another season. Fix has wrestled for the NCAA Championship three times and come up short each time.
I’ve said that I would take a Fix individual NCAA crown and be happy with anything else that does or does not happeing inside the T-Mobile Center starting this Thursday.
“You can’t wish it. Yeah, that would be right at the top of the list along with a couple of more,” head coach John Smith said when I presented him with the option. “That would be really nice. Daton has had a good year. Probably one of his more challenging years. He was held out of several matches this year and the one tournament we wrestled in, the Cliff Keen. I think he has enjoyed this year with this group of guys that allowed him to do a lot more.”
Fix had to fight his way through this season. He missed a lot of wrestling like his coach explained. He went unbeaten and took every challenger but it took the Big 12 crown and some other results around the country in conference tournaments for Fix to be the top seed this week.
“I did think there was a good chance he would be number one,” Smith said of Fix’s seed. “That’s the way it turned out and he deserves that.”
He deserves a championship. He is one of the winningest wrestler ever at Oklahoma State. He has professed his love for Oklahoma State and for Cowboy wrestling. His attitude is not born from cockiness or conceit, but out of learning what it takes for him to win. He focuses on that and not what it takes for other wrestlers to lose.
“I don’t pay much attention to the other guys. They have to worry about me and most of those guys do that,” Fix said. “They always have a plan to wrestler me. They can do that. if they are worried about me then that’s their problem. I’m worried about doing what i can do and scoring points, I like to focus on me and focus on the task at hand.”
There are five more opportunties for Fix to be an Oklahoma State wrestler. He just wants those five . Stay in the championship bracket, count em. first round, round of 16, quarterfinal, semifinal, championship.
“I'm not worried about anything else other than just the match that I have at that moment. I'm worried about one match at a time,” Fix said with determination. “If I just put complete focus into each one of them, then the results are going to happen. I'm going to feel good about the results.”
