On Feb. 28, 1982, N.C. State heavyweight Tab Thacker pinned Clemson heavyweight Bob Isola at 2:24 in the finals of the ACC Wrestling Championships.

Fast forward 25 years later and another Isola appears on an ACC wrestling team. This time it’s Bobby Isola, who like his father, wrestles at heavyweight.

Bobby, a freshman from Orlando, Fla., not only wrestled in high school, but also played offensive tackle and defensive end in football. Being a freshman and competing at heavyweight with juniors and seniors is a rarity, according to assistant coach Jerrod Sanders.

“He’s small,” Sanders said. “A heavyweight can weigh up to 285 pounds. He weighs about 240. And then him being young — he’s a young kid out there wrestling with grown men. He’s finding himself out there.”

Sanders said he and the other coaches, including head coach Carter Jordan, knew Bobby was ready when he walked into the practice room.

“We’re not going to put someone out there that can’t handle himself,” Sanders said. “We can kind of see in the room, see who’s ready and who’s not. He proved himself in the room that he’s ready.”

Bobby said his father was an influence in his decision to start wrestling.

“He taught me everything, like moves,” Bobby said. “Also, the ways it correlates to life and discipline that goes behind it. He would just simply say, ‘To be the best, you have to do more than the rest.'”

According to Bob, his son started to show interest in wrestling six months before he started high school.

“He played soccer for nine years,” the elder Isola said. “He realized when he started growing that he probably wasn’t going to be playing soccer anymore. He said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll wrestle and go play football.’ So we had a conversation and I asked him, ‘Are you sure you want to wrestle?’ And he said, ‘Yeah,’ and I said, ‘OK, but you’re going to have to work hard.'”

Bobby’s father said his son began working with friends and family members to get in shape for wrestling.

“My high school coaches’ son coached my son,” Bob said. “He would work with him a few days a week. He was in college at the time wrestling. He would work with [Bobby] three days a week. Then by about the summer time, he had him go wrestle in different high school tournaments. [Bobby] seemed to pick it up really quick.”

Bobby was not only recruited for wrestling, but was recruited by a number of Division I schools for football, including Duke and Wake Forest. Bobby said one of his coaches told him to look at N.C. State.

“I met Coach Jordan and really liked him a lot,” Bobby said. “He eventually came into contact with me individually and the rest is history.”

One of Bob’s old college teammates is Wolfpack assistant coach Noel Loban, who was one of his roommates at Clemson. Asked about his son being recruited by State, Bob said he thought it would never happen — leading back to February 1982.

“Actually [when] I thought about it, I was like, ‘That would be the last place he would go to college,'” Bob said. “Because my last match in college, I lost to Tab Thacker. I wrestled at heavyweight also like my son. And I weighed 205 pounds. Tab was about 400-something pounds when we wrestled. I was actually beating Tab 10-2, when I made a mistake and got pinned. That was in the ACC championship my senior year in school.”

As for where Bobby’s collegiate wrestling career could go, junior Caleb Churchwell said him starting as a freshman could definitely benefit him in the future.

“It’s great for him,” Churchwell said. “He’ll have four years of competing. He won’t have to redshirt or be a backup at all. This year will be a great learning experience for him. He’ll be able to see how it really is. Come the next year and year after, he’ll know exactly what to do to get it done.”

As for his father, he expects nothing but great things from his son.

“He can never work hard enough,” Bob said. “He only [has] to put forth a little extra effort. That’s both in school and in wrestling.”