By Dan­ny Barletta
MassLive
Decem­ber 2, 2020

Cesar Alvan cel­e­brates after his 100th career vic­to­ry. Pho­to: Mark M. Murray/The Republican

On Sept. 22, 2019, Cesar Alvan was doing what he loved.

He was at a wrestling meet in New York for his off­sea­son club MetroW­est Unit­ed, and he was hav­ing a sol­id day on the mat. He was on his fourth match of the day and was up 9–1 on a tough oppo­nent. Alvan stepped to make a take­down move, but his left knee bent in the wrong direction.

He felt and heard a snap.

“Peo­ple think I’m exag­ger­at­ing when I say this, but it real­ly felt like a rub­ber band snap­ping in my knee,” Alvan said. “It made a loud gun­shot noise. Every­body heard it … It was pret­ty scary.”

Ulti­mate­ly, Alvan suf­fered a torn ACL, MCL, menis­cus and a par­tial­ly torn LCL. He was dev­as­tat­ed and also scared, know­ing that the injury put a pre­ma­ture end to a thor­ough­ly suc­cess­ful high school wrestling career and could jeop­ar­dize his future in the sport.

Alvan knew he had a long road to recov­ery, but his jour­ney as a wrestler had pre­pared him for what lay ahead.

The Path

After he began wrestling in the third grade with the Lud­low Youth Wrestling pro­gram, Alvan even­tu­al­ly took a few years off dur­ing mid­dle school to focus on oth­er sports — like soc­cer. As an eighth grad­er, Alvan was eli­gi­ble to join the Lud­low High School wrestling team. He returned to the sport at the encour­age­ment of some of his old­er friends who were on the team.

“I joined the team and I loved it, and I did real­ly well, espe­cial­ly for an eighth grad­er,” Alvan said.

He went 36–12 that sea­son, mak­ing it all the way to the West­ern Mass­a­chu­setts finals for his weight class, an impres­sive feat for any­one, let alone an eighth grad­er fac­ing high schoolers.

The next sea­son as a fresh­man at Lud­low High, he took off, going 52–5 and becom­ing the first fresh­man in Lud­low his­to­ry to win the state cham­pi­onship. As a sopho­more, he went 50–9 and was the run­ner-up in the state tour­na­ment. He also took fourth place in the New Eng­land tour­na­ment that year.

Head­ing into his junior year, Alvan trans­ferred to Cen­tral for per­son­al and fam­i­ly rea­sons — a move he felt was a good switch both for aca­d­e­mics and ath­let­ics. That year, he had his best sea­son, going 56–2 and win­ning the state tour­na­ment, the all-state tour­na­ment and the New Eng­land tour­na­ment while fin­ish­ing third at the nation­al tournament.

Alvan entered his senior year just six wins shy of 200 for his career, and he was primed for a huge fol­low-up to his incred­i­ble junior year. But his knee injury robbed him of that chance.

Over his high school career, though, Alvan devel­oped a love for wrestling that wouldn’t be ham­pered by an injury.

“I start­ed to find a pas­sion for the sport that I nev­er real­ly knew I had,” Alvan said. “It’s a very spe­cial sport to me because it’s a tough and aggres­sive sport, and that’s real­ly some­thing I like.”

While, the injury could have end­ed Alvan’s wrestling career, but he was deter­mined to work his way back to the top.

The Recov­ery

Alvan start­ed his rehab two days after his injury.

He didn’t have surgery on his knee until ear­ly Decem­ber, but he said rehab­bing before­hand to strength­en his mus­cles gave him a head start on the process. He start­ed with basic things like just lift­ing his leg off the ground and grad­u­al­ly built up after his surgery.

He walked again nor­mal­ly about two months after surgery, and he start­ed adding a lit­tle bit of weight to his work­outs at about the three-month mark.

All the while, despite not being able to wres­tle, he was with his team for every prac­tice and every tournament.

“I had surgery I think on a Mon­day, and I was right back there in the room on Tues­day,” Alvan said. “My coach want­ed to take me in as kind of like an assis­tant coach with the team, help them out as much as I could. … I enjoyed being with the guys. They wres­tled real­ly well. They had a great season.”

Alvan, how­ev­er, knew he want­ed anoth­er year of wrestling before col­lege, so he began look­ing at options for a post­grad­u­ate year.

Zachary Bates, the wrestling coach at North­field Mount Her­mon first saw Alvan com­pete when he was a fresh­man. Bates tried to recruit Alvan ear­ly on in high school, but he wasn’t ini­tial­ly inter­est­ed in prep school. It wasn’t until after his injury that he began seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing a post­grad­u­ate year at NMH.

“It wasn’t so much he need­ed it for an ath­let­ic stand­point or even an aca­d­e­m­ic stand­point,” Bates said. “He just want­ed to be in his best form when he arrived to a col­lege cam­pus … A post­grad­u­ate year allowed him anoth­er year for recov­ery so he wouldn’t have to rush that process.”

From Bates’ point of view, it was a no brain­er to have him join the pro­gram at NMH.

“He’s a great stu­dent and a great ath­lete and a great kid,” Bates said. “We want those types of kids here.”

With that plan in mind, Alvan con­tin­ued to work his way through rehab. He began lift­ing in the weight room again after about six months and start­ed more sports-enhanced rehab — run­ning, turn­ing, cut­ting, etc. — at the eight-month mark.

Through­out the whole recov­ery process, Alvan said his par­ents were the most impor­tant peo­ple because they helped to keep him moti­vat­ed even when he was down.

“It’s a very hard process,” Alvan said. “It’s a long process. In the begin­ning, it’s hard to see the end of the road, but you just got to believe and keep work­ing at it, and even­tu­al­ly you’ll be there.”

Soon after he arrived at NMH in Sep­tem­ber, he was cleared to return to wrestling. He eased his way back into it in the first cou­ple of months, but in the last two weeks, he’s ramped up at practice.

Bates said he’s been real­ly impressed since coach­ing Alvan as he’s worked him­self back to near­ly full strength.

“He’s patient, which I real­ly love,” Bates said. “He doesn’t rush his body. … More than a lot of his peers, he real­ly under­stands his own body because he’s been an ath­lete for so long.”

The Future

Now that Alvan has worked his way back from such a dev­as­tat­ing injury, there’s only one thing left for him to do: compete.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, how­ev­er, has put this wrestling sea­son in jeop­ardy. The Office of Ener­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Affairs clas­si­fied wrestling as a high risk sport last month and did not approve it for com­pe­ti­tion in the state.

Luck­i­ly for Alvan, Bates said NMH has cre­at­ed a bub­ble on its cam­pus, so they have at least prac­ticed as a team safely.

“Kids like Cesar real­ly are depend­ing on the sport of wrestling as well as oth­er fac­tors to get them to where they want to be in col­lege,” Bates said. “It’s impor­tant, and peo­ple here under­stand that, but we also under­stand the risk fac­tor. So we’re try­ing to mit­i­gate risk while still allow­ing kids to prac­tice in the sport they real­ly care about.”

Bates said it doesn’t seem as though the New Eng­land Prepara­to­ry School Ath­let­ic Coun­cil is going to have a reg­u­lar wrestling sea­son, but he said as of right now, the Nation­al Prep Tour­na­ment is on for the mid­dle of March. Alvan hopes that hap­pens because he’s been work­ing for a long time to com­pete again, and doesn’t want to miss anoth­er season.

“If I were to have to sit out two years in a row and not have a nation­al tour­na­ment or some­thing like that … I was going to be dev­as­tat­ed, very sad,” Alvan said.

Next year’s tour­na­ment means a lot to Alvan, but regard­less of what hap­pens, he has a bright future ahead. He has schol­ar­ship offers for Divi­sion I wrestling and is cur­rent­ly decid­ing between three Ivy League schools: Colum­bia, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and Brown.

After col­lege, Alvan said he might look to be part of the Olympic wrestling team, but his main goal is to fight in the UFC. His dad Mar­co trains UFC fight­ers, so he has been around it for most of his life, and he has long had a goal to get there.

“Per­son­al­ly, that’s what I want to do real­ly bad after col­lege,” Alvan said. “It’s been a goal for a while now, espe­cial­ly in the past cou­ple of years that I think it’s reach­able and possible.”

Bates agreed, say­ing that the com­bi­na­tion of Alvan’s back­ground in jiu jit­su and judo and his excel­lence as a wrestler makes him an “excit­ing com­peti­tor” in mixed mar­tial arts.

For now, though, he’ll con­tin­ue his come­back, over­com­ing the chal­lenges of his injury and the pan­dem­ic en route to a con­tin­ued future in the sport.