Missouri’s Alan Waters on track for elusive national championship

As a freshman, Alan Waters showed up on the Missouri campus earlier than expected — perhaps even earlier than he really was allowed — to get his college wrestling career started.

Nearly five years later, that first impression still resonates with Tigers coach Brian Smith.

“His first year, he figured out how to get in the dorms a day early and he was up here in the weight room training by himself all day … so I knew there was something special about him just with his work ethic,” Smith said.

Waters, 23, arrived with an impeccable pedigree.

He was a star at Park Hill, where he went 183-4 and became, at the time, the 18th Missouri high school wrestler to win four state titles.

Waters was 47-0 as a senior with a then-record 42 pins, helping lead the Trojans a second straight Class 4 team title.

At Missouri, he’s been almost as brilliant, going 128-13 and becoming an All-American with a fourth-place national finish in 2013.

Waters, 27-0, is the top-ranked 125-pound wrestler in the nation by the coaches and by the NCAA’s RPI formula.

None of surprises MU coach Brian Smith.

“He was a kid that loved to wrestle,” Smith said. “Everything that his high school coach, (Park Hill’s Bill) Erneste, told me was that we’re going to love him in the room. He just comes in, gets the job done and works hard.”

As decorated as Waters’ career has been throughout, one goal remains elusive.

“I was planning to go to college and be an NCAA champ ever since I was a freshman in high school,” he said.

Waters, who redshirted last season because of three broken bones in his left foot, has reached the NCAA Division I wrestling championships three times (and is a lock to return a fourth time), but he’s never finished better than fourth.

“I’m kind of disappointed with how I’ve done so far at the national tournament,” Waters said. “Not overall in my career as much as just the national tournament, where my outcomes weren’t as I expected them to be the first three years. … I didn’t have very good tournaments. … The thought of being a national champion, I think I put it on a pedestal and thought too hard about it. I didn’t really wrestle like I did the other tournaments. I wrestled different. It changed up my game plan, which I think hurt me.”

Waters, who’ll wrestle at the Hearnes Center for the final time this weekend as No. 1 Missouri hosts the Mid-American Conference wrestling championships, has one last chance to get it right later this month in St. Louis.

“I don’t know why, but I don’t worry about it,” Smith said. “I’ve seen a different kid this year. Two years ago, he was fourth in the country and had a heartbreaking loss in the semifinals. It was just one of those matches that somebody had to lose — there were two great kids that battled it out.”

This season, Waters has wins against seven of the top-10 wrestlers in the NCAA coaches’ rankings and hasn’t flinched.

“He’s turning people every match … and a lot of time he’s dominated,” said Smith, who praised the consistency Waters has shown.

He’s been here before.

Waters, a health sciences major who won 2012 Big 12 and 2013 Mid-American conference titles, was undefeated entering the national semifinals his junior season, but he believes things will be different this year.

“I’m pretty confident going in there this year, a lot more confident than any of the other years,” Waters said. “I don’t have to do anything crazy. I’ve just got to do what I’ve been doing the whole year and I should be fine. … I’ve been there and I’ve done it all before, so I know what to expect and I know I can beat all the guys in the bracket.”

This story was originally published March 6, 2015 at 1:40 PM with the headline "Missouri’s Alan Waters on track for elusive national championship."