‘I gotta do it again’: NC State’s Vince Robinson ready to begin quest to defend 125-pound national title

It sits on a wooden shelf just above eye level on the wall next to his closet inside his Raleigh apartment. He worked all his wrestling life, including redshirting his freshman year at NC State, to earn it, but the brown and gold NCAA Championship trophy isn’t something for him to admire each day. 

Instead, it’s there — not too far from a trio of larger trophies from the 2025 Wolfie Awards, where he won the H.C. Kennett, Rookie of the Year and Individual Performance of the Year honors, on their own two shelves — to humble Vince Robinson.

Robinson, who claimed the 125-pound national championship last spring in his first full season as a collegiate wrestler, walks in and out of his closet without paying too much attention to the crown jewel of his wrestling career to this point. But as he sits at his desk across the room, he’ll sneak a look at the trophy every once in a while.

“It’s like, ‘Oh, I did that,’” Robinson said with a grin. “That kind of snaps me back into reality. I’m not that little boy that I was last year before I got on the scene.”

Instead of appearing to be the second option at the weight going into the season like he was last fall, losing a preseason wrestle off to Jakob Camacho, Robinson is the top wrestler in the country at 125 going into the 2025-26 campaign. Ranked No. 1 in his weight class by both FloWrestling and Intermat, the defending champion knows everyone in the nation is gunning for him. 

In a way, though, Robinson hasn’t changed from what worked last season. He still has a chip on his shoulder, acting as if he didn’t finish on top of the podium in Philadelphia after winning five matches in three days last April inside of the Wells Fargo Center. The redshirt sophomore enters the new year with the quest of repeating his title on the top of mind, yet if you talked to him, it would seem as if he wasn’t the top-ranked collegiate wrestler at 125.

His approach is the same as a year ago, everything that Robinson does is to prove himself as if he was the backup at the weight this season, too. In reality, he’s among the best in the nation, but Robinson doesn’t want to let that get to his head going into his second full season of collegiate wrestling.

“A ranking is a number next to a name. It’s always been,” Robinson said. “ As you’ve seen since Spencer Lee left the scene, No. 1s go up and down, so I just want to keep stability. It’s just a number. Literally, it’s just a number. … You’ve got to prove that you’re No. 1. You’ve got to prove it, and why you’re No. 1. That’s just what it is.”

While Robinson is targeting another deep run through the postseason, there’s still four months of regular season action ahead of him first, opening with Saturday night’s dual inside Reynolds Coliseum against Northern Colorado (6 p.m., ACCNX). With that comes uncharted territory for the champion, who never won an Illinois state title for Homewood-Flossmoor High as he earned a pair of second-place finishes and a third-place showing during his prep career. 

Now, he’s going to get every wrestler’s best effort each night Robinson steps on the mat. He’s no longer the under-the-radar wrestler like he was a year ago. Every competitor wants to knock off the top dog, and doing so against the defending title holder would be that much sweeter for his opponents. 

NC State coach Pat Popolizio, though, believed that could be a good thing for Robinson, who will feel as if he’s wrestling in the postseason nearly every night as he receives each opponent’s quality moves. That could only pay dividends in March as Robinson looks to repeat at the NCAA Tournament, the Wolfpack’s 14th-year coach thought.

“You get one title that keeps you hungry,” Popolizio said. “You’ve got to stay hungry and aggressive and know that you’re going to get everyone’s best competition. I think that’s going to make him that much better. …  that makes you better as a competitor. The more ready you are going to be towards the end of the year because you saw everyone’s best. You’re not going to get to nationals and be surprised.”

While this is a new feeling for Robinson, he’s not alone as a returning title holder. Former NC State standout Nick Gwiazdowski, who won the heavyweight national championship in both 2014 and 2015 before placing second to Penn State’s Kyle Snyder in his final collegiate match to cap the 2016 campaign, is on campus with the Wolfpack RTC. Assistant coach Zack Esposito, meanwhile, won the 2005 national championship at 149 pounds as a junior at Oklahoma State. 

Both of those former champions have been key assets for Robinson, helping prepare him for what he is bound to see on the mat this season. They’ve told him the second title will be harder, which Robinson appeared to know ahead of time, but it will mean that much more to him by the end of it. 

“I’m the No. 1 guy now and I’ve just got to stay the No. 1 guy,” Robinson said. “And I am. That’s what I’m supposed to do.”

Esposito, who has coached 10 other NCAA champions in his career, believes that Robinson could join the elite club of multi-time winners. 

“There are a lot of one-time national champs throughout the country, there’s very few that have done it twice, let alone done it twice at NC State,” Esposito said last spring. “I think he looks at it more as an opportunity to have a chance to not only be cemented in the history of NC State, but to make himself one of the best to ever come through here and one of the best ever in NCAA history.”

It will take growing through the season, and Robinson is already focused on improving his scoring and working while on top through each match. Those were two areas he felt like he could have performed better in last season, which could allow for him to win matches more handedly than having to ride them out in tight score settings as he earned the NCAA title with a 2-1 result. 

Robinson is ready to begin his second quest for a national championship in as many seasons. He has room on his shelf for another trophy, but he knows the one he currently has in his apartment won’t help him win any matches this year. 

Instead, he has to forge another path to the top of the podium at Rocket Arena in Cleveland in March. If he does that, then just maybe he’ll look at the pair together a little more often each day.

“I gotta go do it again,” Robinson said. “Once I get two of them, I think I’ll be a little more satisfied.”