How Seth Nevills’ brothers helped prepare him for Penn State’s wrestling room

Growing up in Clovis, California, Seth Nevills didn’t face a lot of adversity on the wrestling mat.

The four-time California state champ, who finished high school with a 169-1 record, wasn’t used to losing.

“Seth had it easy in high school,” his mother, Kerri Nevills, acknowledged. “He wasn’t challenged that much. He didn’t have to overcome a lot of adversity.”

That all changed two years ago, when he flew across the country to State College, where he spent a year training with the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club before enrolling at Penn State to begin his collegiate wrestling career this past fall. Training with the likes of Olympic champ Jake Varner, 2019 NCAA champion Anthony Cassar and Penn State coach Cael Sanderson can be quickly humbling to even the best of high school wrestlers.

Luckily for Seth, he knew what to expect. His older brother Nick Nevills was a two-time All-American for the Nittany Lions from 2016-19, and knew a thing or two about how to handle the competition in that room.

“Nick really tried to open up my eyes before I got here so it wouldn’t be such a shock for me,” Seth said earlier this week. “I was really thankful for that, that I had someone to lead me in the right direction.”

While Seth didn’t face much competition on the mat growing up, he got plenty of it at home. As the youngest of four boys who all wrestled Division I, competition was woven into everyday life at the Nevills’ home.

From shooting each other with airsoft guns, to dragging each other down the stairs and fighting over wrestling accolades, Kerri said the boys were always competing and roughing each other up, but that’s what she believes helped make them each tough.

“While they were all sitting around the table, unbearably, they’d start talking, ‘I did better at this tournament,’ ‘You came in second,’ ‘You got pinned here,’ and it was just fun to listen to them,” Seth’s father, Wayne Nevills, said. “It was almost like a competition.”

That competition paid off for the Nevills brothers in high school: The oldest, Zach, was a California state champ and four-time state placewinner; Nick was a three-time state champ; and A.J. was also a state champ, all before Seth became just the third four-time state champ in California history.

For a family that has been called “the most successful family ever to compete as California high schoolers,” by the Fresno Bee, wrestling is still sort of new for the Nevillses. Wayne played basketball and baseball in high school, and Kerri played just about every sport her school had to offer, before going on to play volleyball at Vanguard University. But neither grew up around wrestling.

Upon moving to California, Wayne and Kerri enrolled Zach in elementary wrestling as a fourth-grader. He beat a sixth-grader for a spot in the wrestling lineup, and then his brothers, in their typical competitive fashion, each also tried their hand at the sport, intent on outdoing what the other one did.

“They always want to outdo each other and have bragging rights,” Wayne added.

Since then, the relationship between the brothers has evolved. While they’re still competitive, the competition has moved more so off the wrestling mat and onto the gaming console, which has become one of their main sources of communication, according to their parents.

But the brothers remain close. Zach and his wife recently moved to State College, where Nick and his wife also live. Nick has been continuing to train with the NLWC and recently qualified for the Olympic Trials in April. Both brothers go to all of Seth’s home matches.

For Seth, having Nick in the wrestling room both as a mentor and training partner has made all the difference. While they still compete in practice, Seth said he and Nick are no longer focused as much on trying to outdo each other, but rather supporting and encouraging each other. Kerri and Wayne have seen that support pay off for their youngest son.

“Being there for Seth and being able to wrestle with him — and Nick gives Seth a lot of compliments — he says the sky’s the limit for him and has every confidence in Seth,” Wayne said. “I just think it’s important for Seth to have his older bother there and him be a resource for him.”

Added Kerri: “I hope Seth is listening, because it’s so fresh in Nick’s memory because it hasn’t been that long since he’s competed, and there are some things he looks back and wished he could have done differently.”

It appears as if Seth is listening.

When asked Tuesday outside the Lorenzo Wrestling Complex, it didn’t take long for the freshman to rattle off some of the advice his older brother had given him: It’s going to take a long time to win in the Penn State wrestling room and that’s OK; be OK with making mistakes and growing from them; and don’t be afraid to ask questions if you’re not sure about things.

Having the support and guidance from his brother became especially important last week, when Seth suffered his first collegiate loss, falling 7-0 to Iowa’s No. 3 Tony Cassioppi, which ultimately decided the dual for the Hawkeyes. The competition won’t get any easier for the youngest Nevills, either, as he goes on this weekend to potentially face Wisconsin’s No. 5 Trent Hillger and Minnesota’s top-ranked Gable Steveson, both on the road.

But now that he’s gotten used to facing higher-level competition by working out in Penn State’s wrestling room for the past year and a half, Seth wasn’t treating this week of training or competition differently from any other.

“Everybody at this point in the Big Ten is going to be good,” Seth said. “Everyone’s going to be able to take shots, get up from bottom and ride on top. I just got to go out there and wrestle my best match.”

One of the main attractions for the Nevills family in sending their sons to Penn State was the quality of competition in the wrestling room.

“How much better you get often depends on who your training partners are,” Wayne said.

After spending a grayshirt year training with the NLWC, and training through the first half of this season until his redshirt was pulled at the beginning of January, Nevills says he’s grown by “leaps and bounds” since his days at Clovis High and is enjoying every second of the experience.

No matter what happens this weekend, Seth is confident in his ability to continue growing, thanks to the quality of competition he surrounds himself with — whether it’s from growing up with his brothers, or now in Penn State’s wrestling room.

“These are the best guys pretty much around the country,” Seth said. “Just wrestling with them and then going and wrestling with the guys out there, you feel pretty confident in what you can do and that just sets you up for a whole lot of success.”

No. 2 Penn State (8-2, 5-1 Big Ten) at No. 9 Wisconsin (10-3, 3-3 Big Ten)

When: 9 p.m., Friday

Where: UW Field House, Madison, Wisc.

TV: BTN (55)

Radio: WRSC 93.3 FM or WQWK 103.7 FM

Online: FloWrestling.com (paid subscription)

No. 2 Penn State (8-2, 5-1 Big Ten) at No. 13 Minnesota (9-5, 4-2 Big Ten)

When: 2 p.m., Sunday

Where: Maturi Pavilion, Minneapolis

TV: BTN (55)

Radio: WRSC 93.3 FM or WQWK 103.7 FM

Online: FloWrestling.com (paid subscription)

This story was originally published February 6, 2020 at 6:03 PM.

Lauren Muthler

Centre Daily Times

814-231-4646

Lauren Muthler is managing editor at the Centre Daily Times who also covers Penn State wrestling and any other interesting stories that come up.