Senior's undefeated season a first for Nassau County
Clayton FreemanJacksonville Florida Times-Union
Whenever the sweat and the grind and the thuds of body on wrestling mat threatened to wear down Enzo Gamba, the Fernandina Beach senior looked toward the tranquility of the Atlantic Ocean.
There, a Pirate atop a surfboard on the sea, he found a time and a place to unwind.
"It keeps me relaxed, where I don't have to worry about the stress," he said.
A champion on land, invigorated by the water, Gamba made history on the mat in 2023-24 as the Times-Union's All-First Coast athlete of the year for boys wrestling.
Gamba carved buzzsaw-style through the senior-year competition, finishing at 54-0 for his final year on the high school mat and lifting the first-ever Florida High School Athletic Association wrestling championship for Fernandina Beach.
"He's an extremely hard worker, extremely focused," Fernandina Beach head coach Eric Kubatzke said. "He would go above and beyond whatever effort most other kids would want to put in."
But work in the wrestling room was only one piece of the winning puzzle for Gamba. Relentless and focused in one-on-one wrestling competition, he also made time to develop a different side of his athletic craft.
"You can't keep me out of the water," he said.
All-First Coast girls wrestling: Middleburg's Cheyenne Cruce unbeatable again
LAYING THE FOUNDATION IN PENNSYLVANIA
Once, Gamba's plans didn't focus on surfing or even wrestling. He tried a few other sports early on without anything really sticking, until pretty soon it turned out that he had the wrestling instincts from the start.
"I'd come home and basically just jump all over my dad, not even knowing what wrestling really was," he said.
That's when what he calls his "thirst to stay active" led him to wrestling, and in the wrestling hotbed that is the Philadelphia area, he had plenty of options. In his earliest competitions on the mat, he was already learning alongside multiple wrestlers who grew up to become contenders in Pennsylvania.
"Almost everyone from there is now a state winner or a state placer," he said. "They're just hammers, all super guys."
That background made him an instant contender in Florida when he arrived in Fernandina Beach five years ago.
"When I first met him, he was doing a club practice, and right away he was going up against some of our high school wrestlers," Kubatzke said. "His skill level was way, way above what you see in a seventh-grader."
Skill level, yes. But to turn Fernandina Beach into a wrestling power? Mission impossible.
Before Gamba arrived, Fernandina Beach had never before won a state championship. Schad Freeman had qualified for the 189-pound Class 3A final in 1994, and Rudy Leming had reached the 135-pound Class 1A final in 2001. Both lost.
In 2024, the ending was different.
FROM LAND TO WATER
In Pennsylvania, Gamba found his first favorite sport. In Florida, he discovered his second.
Surfing and wrestling, for some, couldn't differ more sharply. But Gamba not only found parallels between the sports' skill sets. For him, surfing reinforces some of the same mental tools that he brings into the wrestling room.
"You're trying to use the water to let you do your moves, just like in wrestling," he said.
Even once wrestling season ended, he didn't slow down in the water. Gamba took a spring break trip to Costa Rica, testing out his skills on a coast that traditionally attracts surfers from around the world.
"It's definitely made me able to overcome obstacles better, through the calmness aspect of it, that calm under pressure," he said. "A lot of the virtues that many wrestlers don't have, I got through surfing."
MAKING HISTORY FOR FERNANDINA BEACH
With Fernandina Beach, Gamba grew into a near-unstoppable force, completing the regional phase undefeated in every season.
In his freshman season, he went 27-2 at 152 pounds, qualifying for the state tournament. He finished 40-2 as a sophom*ore at 160 pounds in 2021-22, placing seventh, then completed his junior year at 48-2 with a third-place finish in Class 1A.
But until this winter, victory in the state tournament had escaped him, and for a while, he worried about whether that might happen again. In January, he injured a knee during his victory at the Cradle Cancer Invitational tournament in Jensen Beach, north of West Palm Beach.
"I couldn't let anybody know about it," he said. "I didn't want it to become a weakness that people might attack… I thought it was possibly going to ruin my season.
"It bothered me the whole way, but it's worth it."
Competing in the Class 1A tournament at 157 pounds, Gamba won his first two matches by a technical fall and then by fall, following with a major decision in the semifinal.
Finally, a final. Matched against Kalias Nazario of Mater Lakes Academy in the final, Gamba won an 8-4 decision inside Silver Spurs Arena in Kissimmee.
"I really wanted to get it done for my school and my community. I was behind in the first period but I stayed calm the whole time and eventually just broke the other kid," he said. "I think that calm came from surfing."
Though his high school career is over, Gamba hopes to continue wrestling at the club level at the University of Florida next year, where he's interested in studying biomedical engineering.
And Fernandina Beach's program is looking up, too. In addition to Gamba's triumph, the Pirates placed three more wrestlers at the state finals: Cael Kubatzke came in second at 138 pounds, Cole Misciagna was fourth at 144 and Nolan McKelvy took fifth at 175.
"We were a brand new team six years ago with zero experience, and now we've got four state placers," Gamba said. "It just comes from the commitment and the coaching, rising to the occasion."
ALL-FIRST COAST BOYS WRESTLER OF THE YEAR
Enzo Gamba
Senior, Fernandina Beach
Age: 18
Resume: Won Class 1A state championship at 157 pounds, finishing at 54-0 for the season with 27 pins. … Four-time district champion and state qualifier. … First-ever state wrestling champion from Nassau County. … Plans to enroll at Florida.
.
