A Wrestler by Any Other Name : Call Him What You Will, Woodbury’s Winning on the Mat

Your basic Brad Woodbury package is by no means complete without a Butch, a Blueberry, maybe a Psycho, one of the nicknames that cling to him like lint.

They describe him. Not all of him, you understand. Let’s hope the word Blueberry (a play on Brad’s last name) doesn’t describe the entire depth and width of anyone’s life, but they do draw the outline of his 17 years. And, if you look hard enough, they also lend the Crayolas to fill in between the lines.

Take Butch. Butch came about simply to describe Woodbury’s hair style--a swatch of blond shag piled on top, shaved sides working their way back to long locks falling over the scruff of the neck.

Woodbury’s hair accentuates the strange blend of control, laughter, discipline and chaos in his life. It’s short for the requirements and probing fingers of wrestling, a sport at which Woodbury, who wrestles at 135 pounds for Fountain Valley High School, has few peers this season. He has a 40-2 record.

Last week, he won the 4-A championship and, today, is one of the favorites to take the title at the Masters Meet at Fountain Valley High. The Masters qualifies individuals for the state championships to be held in Stockton, March 4-5.

Chances are Woodbury will find himself in Stockton, which is a tribute to untold hours of work not only with his teammates but in summer freestyle tournaments and workouts with college wrestlers at Golden West and Cal State Fullerton.

“He’s earned all of this,” said John Rosales, Fountain Valley coach. “He’s got a lot of discipline and drive.”

But there remains a part of Brad Woodbury that refuses to be tamed. Whether it’s letting the hair grow long on his neck, or risking that neck by pushing out into a dark ocean on a stormy night with nothing but the cover of a Boogie Board to protect him.

“That might have been a stupid thing to do,” he said.

Which brings us to Out Of Bounds, another nickname, another dual meaning. Out Of Bounds came about to describe Woodbury’s style as a junior when he had a tendency to teeter on the edge of the mat. It also is apt for describing a kid who, after a prank played on a rival high school last year, had to lie face down in a bed of begonias as a security officer searched the bushes for him.

Exactly what kind of prank he and his friends played, well, Woodbury isn’t so eager to relay that information for fear Fountain Valley High officials may come up with a new nickname for him . . . Busted.

“The guy is out of control,” said Reza Mehdizadeh, a friend and former teammate on the Fountain Valley wrestling team.

Woodbury assures that even though the last attempt was a bit thwarted, there will be other attempts at prank history.

“I can’t get too specific,” he said. “But we do have another one of those things planned. All I can say is that it will involve chickens.”

Psycho is Mehdizadeh’s favorite tag for Woodbury, though, it should be noted, Psycho doesn’t refer to any destructive tendencies. As Mehdizadeh admits, “he’s really a very nice psycho.”

It’s just that Mehdizadeh always found it amazing, and a bit exasperating, when Woodbury would preface a three-hour wrestling practice by going surfing for an hour or two.

“I’d say, ‘If you’re going to do anything, you should sleep before practice,’ ” Mehdizadeh said. “But he’d tell me, ‘Hey, the waves are great today. See ya.’ ”

Woodbury has stopped surfing before practice this season, having weighed in at a summer freestyle tournament, gone surfing for two hours, then come back to be shut out and slammed down.

“Unfortunately, during this season, I usually have only surfed on weekends,” Woodbury said.

Which says something about his increased emphasis on wrestling.

“I think it’s just a natural maturation process,” Rosales said. “He’s always been good, this year he knew he could really do something big and he went out to do it.”

Still, Woodbury’s devotion to surfing remains extreme, and may be because he was not born to it but was converted. He lived the first 13 years of his life in Connecticut where, “the nearest ocean was a swimming pool.”

He lived on a farm and played football. When his mother, Beth Laseter, told him his stepfather, Daniel Laseter, had got a job with an aerospace company in California, Brad knew she meant the entire family would be going to California.

“He really didn’t want to go,” Beth said. “He talked about how he’d miss all his friends. He got to California, and about a week later, I think he forgot every name he ever knew in Connecticut.”

Woodbury said: “Well, I was getting pretty tired of cleaning up the horses’ stalls.”

Woodbury had taken to rising at 5:30 a.m. to hit the waves. He started with a Boogie Board as a freshman at Fountain Valley High the same year he started wrestling on the frosh-soph team. By his sophomore year he had graduated to a surfboard and the varsity.

“He got into it pretty quick,” said Scott MacMillan, a teammate and one of the people who introduced Woodbury to surfing. “He was brave. That’s important. You can’t be scared.”