Untold Athletes – Adrian Rosario-Beato – Wrestling

Adrian Rosario-Beato is a sophomore who wrestles at 149 pounds from Bronx, N.Y. and immigrated from the Dominican Republic. Rosario-Beato is majoring in business administration at IC and won seven bouts during the 2019-20 season.

I knew wrestling was my passion in eighth grade. It became a passion for me when I realized it was the one thing I was missing in my life. I noticed every time I put myself on that mat, all my problems or worries were gone, and after each practice, I felt like a new person. 

Wrestling means the world to me because it made me become the young man I am. It has introduced me to beautiful people, teammates, and coaches who believe in me and see my potential. My sport has taught me many lessons. Some of the most important lessons that I can share with you are it has taught me that as long as you work hard and believe in yourself, you can beat the odds. Wrestling has taught me that staying consistent is the key to success despite having failed on the way. Lastly, it has taught me always to keep my head up. Making excuses is not going to help me; being lazy and blaming others for my performance is not the way. You only go as far as the effort you put in. Putting in the work, the effort, having an optimistic attitude, and surrounding myself with the right group will help me!

What makes my story different from others is what I have overcome, and I am still trying to overcome it. I was born in the Dominican Republic, and as you can imagine, not everyone has the best living conditions. Life is difficult in the DR, opportunities are rare, and resources are scarce. In my home country, they equivalated to the success of young men with becoming a professional baseball player. For this reason, I began playing baseball at a young age. However, it wasn't my passion. It didn't fulfill my needs; it wasn't something I was excited to play every day. I needed something to channel all this energy inside of me and still do while also taming my aggression. When I moved to the United States of America, I started wrestling in 6th grade. My world was flipped upside down. Not knowing English and not knowing what I was doing in school impacted my grades and self-esteem tremendously. I was scared to speak English because of my accent. However, wrestling motivated me to work super hard outside the wrestling mat, work on my English, and become the best version of myself. When I got to high school, I felt confident and ready to confront the world. I was prepared to face the odds of becoming the best student in my class and one of the city's best wrestlers. Despite not knowing any English and still having an accent, I can say I was part of the honor society, two-time student-athlete of the year for my high school, salutatorian, and 2019-20 ECWC All-Academic Team. I am proud of how far I've come and can only hope to advance in all aspects of my life further.    

One of the biggest obstacles I had to overcome throughout my career was not communicating with my coach during my first wrestling year. Since I didn’t know any English, I had a friend who translated the techniques and the advice the coach would give me until I got it. Also, since I did not know English, it impacted my grades in school. I was shy and scared to speak it because I felt people were going to make fun of my accent, and as a result, I felt as though my English was never improving. My frustrations kept growing, and many times I contemplated giving up on the sport. However, as the years progressed, I slowly but surely began to speak more, and I realized that wrestling was the one thing I truly enjoyed. It kept pushing me to keep going and to want to improve my English so that I can speak to my coach and improve in the sport I loved so much. 

This one moment in my freshman year of college both defined me as a person and as an athlete. I was wrestling against one of my teammates, a senior, and a very talented and good wrestler during practice. Every time I wrestled this guy, I always got excited because I wanted to know how much I have gotten better from the last time I wrestled him. But that day, I was so confident in my shot, but I couldn't get it to work against him. He beat me up during that practice. Things got heated, and he put me in a headlock that I couldn't get out. I broke down during that very moment, and I just cried because I failed at attempting something, I was so sure and confident about. But that did not stop me from finishing practice. During that moment of failure, I realized that I genuinely care about the sport and the work I have put into my craft. As a person, I saw that life is not easy. There will be bumps throughout my journey, but you must get up and keep moving forward. I will never forget this day.

My experience growing up playing a predominantly white sport, wrestling, was unexpected because when I started wrestling in middle school, all my teammates were minorities, even in high school. However, once I got to high school, I started seeing that the sport was predominantly white when my coach took me to Long Island to tournaments where I had different competition. Something positive about this experience is that I stood out when they saw a city wrestler coming down to Long Island and winning their tournament. Also, I'm able to interact with a different culture and be exposed to new techniques and views in life. After attending Ithaca College, my team was predominantly white. This was the first time this has ever happened. When there, I felt out of place. There weren't a lot of people who looked like me. At first glance, all I could see was that we had one thing in common - wrestling. Playing a predominantly white sport in a neighborhood like the one I grew in, the Bronx, I didn't have the same type of resources other wrestlers had. So, I had to work twice the amount to make a name for myself and my school. However, meeting my new teammates and coaches from Ithaca College and spending most of my time with them during morning workouts, practices, tournaments, and just overall bonding time, I was able to see that we had more in common. This has changed my views and stereotypes that I had previously as part of where I grew up. I'm able to learn new things about their childhood, background, or goals that are similar to mine. Their personalities are very welcoming, pushing me to get the best grades that I can, and we healthily compete against each other. Because of this sport, I was able to network with people and make long life friends who are different from me.