Submitted photo – Micaiah Montalbin competing for Southwestern Oregon this past season.

By Ray Hamill — It’s been a long and challenging journey to get to where he wanted to be, but one former Fortuna Husky will finally get to fulfill a lifelong dream.

Micaiah Montalbin, who graduated from Fortuna High in 2021, recently received a scholarship offer to wrestle at Cal Poly Humboldt, becoming one of the first recruits for new head coach Lennie Zalesky, whose team will begin competing on the mats this coming winter.

For Montalbin, the opportunity is one he has waited a long time for.

In the mid 1970s, his grandfather Mike Karges wrestled for the Lumberjacks under legendary head coach Frank Cheek and enjoyed a hall-of-fame career competing for Humboldt State.

Now Montalbin will get to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps and he couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity.

“I’m super stoked,” he said. “I’m really excited to get to see my grandfather come watch me wrestle. I know it means a lot to him, and it means a lot to me.

“I always wanted to wrestle at Cal Poly Humboldt, but they didn’t have a program, and I didn’t know if it would work out, but it did.”

For Montalbin, it hasn’t been an easy journey.

Since graduating high school at the age of 17, the former Husky has had his patience tested with a series of setbacks.

He committed to wrestle for Southwestern Oregon out of high school, but suffered a torn labrum right before he was about to leave and had to put off his college career for a year.

Things didn’t get any easier the following year when he suffered a torn meniscus shortly before the season, and after returning to the mats too soon he tore his meniscus “even worse,” he said.

After three surgeries, however, Montalbin was back on the mats this past winter and wrestling for long-time head coach Adam Whitlatch at SWOCC, whom his stepfather and current Fortuna head coach Steven Stockdale had wrestled for.

And the experience was an enjoyable one for the younger grappler.

“It’s pretty similar to Humboldt,” Montalbin said “I had a lot of fun there and coach Whitlatch is a good coach. We were in one of the top conferences in the nation as far as JCs. Our conference was really tough.”

That level of competition is what put Montalbin on Zalesky’s radar, and with Whitlatch retiring this year the former Fortuna Husky was looking for a new school and jumped at the opportunity to return close to home.

He admits, however, there were times during the setbacks that he considered packing it in.

“It’s been a long tough road trying to get to where I am,” he said. “I had to ask myself is this something I want to do? There’s always the potential to get hurt again. It made me really think, do I want to do this?”

In the end, however, the answer was an emphatic yes.

“There was a point where I was not going to,” he said. “But I said to myself ‘no, I got this.’ You’re only young for so long.”

The former Husky standout, who was a two-time North Coast Section qualifier during his high school career, believes competing for Fortuna helped prepare him for the college mats.

“We had a lot of tough guys when I was a sophomore and junior at Fortuna,” he said. “We had a lot of really good wrestlers in the room. At Fortuna they go really hard and practices are not easy.”

In particular, Stockdale was hugely influential in his stepson’s career.

“My biggest influence was my stepdad for sure,” Montalbin said. “He helped me in so many ways. He pushed me in the direction I needed to go to be a college wrestler. I would not be here without him.”

Montalbin’s perseverance is good news for the Lumberjacks, who will be back competing on the mats for the first time since the early 1990s.

And Montalbin is relishing the opportunity.

“I want to go place at nationals,” he said. “I think I’ll need some time to get there, but I think the coach will help. He’s coached a lot at a high level. Give me a year or two and you’ll see me at nationals.”

And fortunately for Montalbin, so too will his grandfather.