Mulberry Wrestler Balances Fatherhood With State Title Hopes

THE LEDGER

Nino Cerna rocks the brown Winnie the Pooh baby bouncer with his big toe on his right foot, his four-month-old son, Colton, giggling and cooing with the back-and-forth motion.

 

The yellow pacifier slips out of Colton's mouth and daddy picks it up, places it back in his son's mouth, wiping up the small amount of drool that has appeared on the right side of Colton's cheek and onto his light-and-dark-blue-striped onesie.

 

The little guy is a handful, especially for Cerna, a senior wrestler at Mulberry who is handling a newborn, a new coaching staff and high hopes of becoming the school's first state champion.

 

It's a Thursday afternoon and Cerna, a freckle-faced, 5-foot-7, 126-pounder, who starts his quest for a state title today at the Class 1A, Regional 2 tournament at Tenoroc High School, is relaxing at his mother's house in Lakeland. He's sitting back on the brown couch in the living room, talking about wrestling, his son and the circumstances surrounding his life and how quickly it changed one March morning when his girlfriend, and high school sweetheart, Mercedes Proulx, told him she was pregnant.

 

"She was nervous," Cerna said. "But I just grabbed her and started hugging her and told her it would be alright."

 

That moment, just outside the bathroom, was scary for Cerna, a then-17-year-old whose thoughts mostly circled around wrestling and getting into the Marines. Now, at school and during wrestling practice, he constantly thinks about his little blue-eyed bundle of joy. At 6 a.m. before leaving for school, the focus is on feeding Colton and changing his diaper. It's a big shift but one he has handled well. And he's done it with plenty of help.

 

"A lot of parents told me to make him drop out and get his G.E.D., get him to start working full time," his mother, Kelley Maxwell, said. "I said no. Dropping out would have been a quick fix, and I didn't want that."

 

Proulx, a brown-haired, blue-eyed bubbly 19-year-old, also has been key in the big picture. She juggles school and a 9-to-5 job Monday through Friday. Her mom helps watch the baby, as does Maxwell, when Cerna is in school and Proulx is at work. Additional family members step in when the two need extra babysitters. Cerna doesn't work at the moment, mainly because his mom wants him to focus all his time on his school and his sport.

 

With everyone's backing, he's stepped up big this year. Cerna is ranked third in the state in Class 1A, has a 50-2 record and county and district titles to match. He's getting interest from Appalachian State University and has been invited to Duke's summer camp for tryouts. More importantly, he's sporting a 3.4 GPA.

 

And he's holding it all together at a trying time for Mulberry's wrestling team.

 

Bing Osborn, the head coach at the school for nine years, is currently being investigated by the Polk County School District for a reason personnel investigators won't delve into. In December, Osborn was questioned about an alleged hazing incident, his athletic director confirmed then, but School District officials won't comment on the specifics now until the case is closed.

 

Osborn hasn't been able to coach since then, leaving the wrestling team under the direction of a teacher at the school who has a little bit of background in the sport.

 

"It's not the same without Bing there," Cerna said. "It was like losing a dad when he told us the news. I was close to quitting."

 

But he reassessed the situation, taking a more mature approach than he would have in years past, something he learned by having a child.

 

"Our new coach is not great in terms of teaching us things about the sport, but he's a good person. If it wasn't for him stepping in, we probably wouldn't have a wrestling season. So I told our team that we should be grateful. I felt that as a leader, I would have let them down if I left."

 

And let his son down, too.

 

"He may not realize it now, but he's a big part of why I want to do so well," Cerna said. "I told everyone I'm going to be the first state champ at Mulberry, and I want him to look back at it knowing that when he's grown."

 

Colton, all 12 pounds, probably won't remember these moments. But he'll have pictures, and a onesie that reads "Go Daddy" on it, as a keepsake.

 

"He's also going to be state wrestling champ one day," Proulx said.

 

Now, it's Cerna's turn.