Unfinished Business

Jaxon Smith played football and baseball before ever stepping on a wrestling mat. Wrestling found him by coincidence, and now he's competing for the second straight year at the NCAA Wrestling Championships. 

Smith was five years old when he told his dad he wanted to start wrestling. He was at his local high school preparing for one of his practices and singled out a flyer for wrestling tryouts amongst many on a bulletin board. The very next day, he gave wrestling a shot. Smith has not stopped wrestling since, and his love for the sport has only grown from that point on. 

But the story doesn't end there. By the time he was about 10 years old, Smith was a solid three-sport athlete. He had a personal trainer, and after one of his sessions, he and his dad were in the car heading to wrestling practice. His dad asked him a difficult question: "Do you want to be good at all three of these sports, or do you want to be great at one?"

The question was easy for the 10-year-old to answer. 

"I didn't need to think too long," Smith reflected. "I wanted to wrestle, so I picked wrestling and decided to stop playing the other sports. I wanted to stick to wrestling and try to become great at it."

If being great at wrestling was Smith's goal, he vastly overshot his target. He compiled a 100-1 record as a high school wrestler in Georgia and became a two-time state champion. Smith was the No. 8 ranked 182-pounder in the country coming out of high school, according to FloWrestling. He even led his high school to undefeated seasons and state championships in 2019 and 2020.

He committed to Maryland as part of head coach Alex Clemsen's top-eight 2021 recruiting class, and his success only grew. He was a Pan-American Championship gold medalist and a U20 U.S. Open Champion in 2022 in the summer coming off his redshirt season.

Smith finished his redshirt freshman season with a 23-8 record and a team-high seven pins. He was the No. 10 ranked 197-pounder and was named first-team all-freshman, according to InterMat. He also placed third at the 2023 Big Ten Championshps, the highest finish for a Terp since 2019. 

Now, the redshirt sophomore is fresh off a fourth-place finish at the 2024 Big Ten Championships. Smith attributes his success to setting goals every year. 

"Small goals, medium goals, large goals and being able to check them off as I continue to compete and get better and see myself grow," Smith said. "I think seeing myself compete with these guys who are All-Americans and have a high rank in the country and getting some wins definitely helped my confidence."

Smith was a 2023 NCAA Championship quarterfinalist as a No. 11 seed. He scored two takedowns in his first bout to win 6-3. His second match lasted less than three minutes, ending with a first-period pin to score an upset over NC State's sixth-seeded Issac Trumble to advance to the quarterfinals. He had two matches with chances to become an All-American, including one in the blood round Friday evening. However, Smith came up just short in his freshman year and first taste of the NCAA Championships. 

The Terp wrestler reflected on his finish last year in Tulsa. 

"Last year, my goal was to be an All-American, and I came up short," Smith said. "I lost in the blood round by one point. I think a lot of that was because my goal was to be an All-American and not to be a national champion. I think the difference between trying to be a national champion and trying to be an All-American is really big."

Smith has retooled his approach for this year's NCAA Championships in Kansas City. He says he's training to become a national champion, not an All-American.        

Once again, the Georgia native enters the competition as a No. 11 seed. He's one of five Terps wrestlers competing on the national stage. The other student-athletes are No. 12 seed Ethen Miller (149 pounds), No. 17 seed Braxton Brown (133 pounds), No. 30 seed Seth Nevills (285 pounds), and No. 32 seed Kal Miller (141 pounds). 

The 197-pounder is one of the team's leaders. He was named captain ahead of the season, joining established captain Dominic Solis. Clemsen says he has grown as a competitor and leader since entering the program.

"Jaxon, from day one has led by his work ethic and competitiveness. He has also competed in the classroom, and that is a big part of what we do at Maryland wrestling," Clemsen said. "This off-season we really saw him start to step up in that role and I know our program has benefited because of that. I am confident Jaxon will continue to evolve in that capacity for himself and his teammates and because of that, both will be better for it."

Smith and the other Terps traveling to Kansas City have a chance to become the first Maryland wrestling All-American since Youssif Hemida went back-to-back in 2018 and 2019. 

Smith has turned last year's loss in the NCAA Quarterfinals into a positive. It has allowed him to take a different approach and motivated him throughout the year. On March 21-23, Smith has his eyes set on redemption.

"It kind of gave me that little bit of push that I needed," Smith said. "That motivation of being so close, yet so far away at the same time. When things get hard in that practice, I just think going hard on this sprint is going to make the difference between being an All-American and not."