A lot of natural athletes can sit back, relax and let complacency overtake commitment.

When you’re that talented, the painstaking pursuit of perfection can easily lose its luster.

But that’s never been the case for Spaulding’s Elias Kalat, who embraced the daily grind and used his motivation to improve from good to an all-time great. The senior wrestler locked horns on the mat with coaches and training partners for countless hours in practice and reaped the rewards during competitions, becoming the first Crimson Tide athlete in nearly a quarter-century to win three individual state championships.

Kalat also took over the all-time record for victories at Spaulding, which owns four state titles and triumphed at New England Championships in 1995. And Kalat’s selection as the repeat Times Argus Wrestler of the Year is more of a formality than a surprise after he played an instrumental role in the Tide’s transformation from perennial underdogs to legitimate title contenders.

After compiling a 158-28 record over four years, Kalat will graduate among the best grapplers in program history and is one of 48 Vermont competitors to win three crowns. He joined Jerry Chaloux, Shawn Colbeth and Joe Hammond as a three-time champion for the Granite City squad, while former Tide stars Phil Kerin and Jerimiah Gingras are two of the 12 Vermonters to ever capture four titles.

And even though Kalat will be celebrated for the quantity of his wins, it’s the quality of those victories that’s most astounding. For the past two years he put on a clinic in the state finals, defeating Middlebury’s Avery Carl and Mount Anthony’s Asa Reis by massive margins. The difficulty of those tasks can’t be overstated, with Carl poised to graduate as Middlebury’s winningest wrestler while Reis prepares to help the Patriots capture their 37th straight championship next winter.

Kalat placed fourth at the state meet his freshman year and finished with a 30-13 record. He finished first that season at the Berkshire Holiday Tournament and Plymouth Tournament before pinning Mount Anthony’s Sam Blackmon in the regular-season finale, handing the Patriots their first dual meet loss in 36 years. Two weeks later Kalat suffered a 1-0 semifinal defeat in the state semifinals against Carl, who ended up prevailing in the 132-pound title match. And the Tide wound up 5.5 points behind Mount Anthony in the team results, marking the Patriots’ closest state finals victory since 1991.

Kalat went 42-7 as a sophomore after winning individual titles at the Minickiello Tournament in Keene, N.H., the Michael J. Baker Classic and the Plymouth Tournament. He faced off against Reis in the 138-pound state finals and quickly established his dominance during a 7-1 victory.

Last season Kalat went 48-4 as the Tide continued to seek out the most competitive tournaments across New England and New York. He took home top honors at the Noble Invitational in Maine and at the Capital City Classic and Plymouth Invitational in New Hampshire. And he was named the Outstanding Wrestler at the state meet after quickly turning the finals into a rout during an 18-6 win over Carl at 144 pounds.

This past winter Kalat pieced together a 38-4 record as Spaulding faced even more opponents who were ranked in the top-10 regionally. At the Joe Capone Invitational in South Kingstown, R.I., he secured a 7-4 win over Ben White, who was this year’s runner-up in the Ocean State. Kalat placed second at the Salem Blue Devil Classic after earning 19-6 major-decision victory over Goffstown’s Ian Campbell in the semis.

Kalal was in top form again at the Noble Invitational and recorded a 12-5 victory over Sanford’s James Chaplick, who wound up placing third at 144 pounds during the Maine state meet. Kalat went 5-1 at the tourney and pinned two-time New Hampshire state champ Caleb O’Rourke in 1:50 during their third-place bout. O’Rourke ended up earning 47 victories this season and placed second at both the state meet and the Meet of Champions

Kalat was third at the Saratoga (N.Y.) Invitational, where he served up a 6-2 minor-decision victory over Valley Central’s Maximus Smith. And after Spaulding beat Mount Anthony in a late-season dual meet, Kalat took on Reis again in the state meet finals and steadily pulled away en route to a 14-5 victory at 138 pounds.

A few weeks later Reis took home fourth-place honors at New Englands, underscoring just how impressive Kalat’s caliber of competition has been for the past four years. And considering that MAU has won the state meet by over 100 points 23 times during its title streak, it’s clear that times have changed after the Patriots (210.5 points) faced all they could handle while holding off runner-up Middlebury (199 points) and third-place Spaulding (177.5 points).

Here a handful of questions for Tide coach Darren O’Meara about Kalat, who was recently nominated for the Dave Schultz High School Excellence Award:

TA: With Eli being the first three-time champ at Spaulding in 24 years, how surprising was it for him to accomplish that? And in your mind does it signal an overall renaissance for wrestling in Barre?

O’Meara: “I think, if you were to ask Eli, he’d probably say that he wanted to win four. And if you ask me about the reality of that, I would say that he’s a great athlete but he probably didn’t technically have the tools at the time to win four. He had the drive, he had the desire and he had the work ethic. But he needed to develop the skill set. And that’s what he did. Especially after his freshman year, he realized that just heart and desire aren’t enough. You’ve got to have the tools, and he really worked on the tools. So I don’t think I’m surprised. And we definitely knew Eli was the best athlete in town. And people around town will tell you, ‘Oh, when that kid was in youth soccer... Or when that kid was in baseball... or when that kid was on the basketball team...’ Everybody knew he was going to be the best at whatever he did. And I’m happy he had the career he had during the season and the state tournament — I’m grateful for that and I’m sure he is too.”

TA: Can you single a few moves he used to take control of so many matches?

O’Meara: “Leg attacks. He didn’t have a decent takedown early on, so he had to develop that and he developed a good top game where he was able turn guys. And this last part of his career we had to work a lot on bottom and match strategy and tactics – things that are a more higher-level part of the game. So if we want to beat really good guys, it’s now we’ve got to have a skill set, we’ve got to have tools and we’ve got to have drive, we’ve got to have work ethic — but we also have to have tactics. Because everybody else at that level has a skill set and they have drive and they have work ethic. So it becomes like a game of inches. But early on it was leg attacks and being able to score on his feet. And then toward the end of his career it was more tactical, but also a little bit of bottom work.”

TA: How challenging is it for guys like Eli to stay motivated for so many years in a sport with so many weekend tournaments and long bus rides?

O’Meara: “Our focus recently has been to really develop guys when they get to the eighth-grade and ninth-grade level. It’s been somewhat of a strategy of ours to avoid youth burnout and not really push the envelope as far as commitment and training intensity until guys are ready for it and they’ve matured to that point. And that bucks the trend a little bit right now where there’s a huge industry in youth sports. ...There are crazy schedules where maybe teams don’t really know how to play soccer yet, but they’re going to travel every Saturday all over the place. And I don’t know that kids are really ready for what some parents or coaches are trying to push. So even though Eli dabbled in wrestling before Covid, he also played basketball and he played soccer and he played baseball and he played travel ball. And then at the end of his seventh-grade year and then over Covid, that was the time. And then basically those 39 months from the start of his freshman season to his last match as a senior, that’s where all the development and all the time was in. We don’t necessarily have expectations of guys coming in ready to win (a title) out of the gate, even though they may have a lot of the natural, innate abilities to do that. But we’re not expecting them to have the skill set and the discipline and the maturity to do that. It’s not a goal of ours at this point. I don’t know that it will be the case forever. But for right now and for we are, we want to keep putting our philosophy into this for a little before we make an adjustment and just see if we’re on the right track to making a sport that is really popular in the area that good athletes like Eli really want to come do. We’re trying not lose those guys to hockey or basketball, and we could have easily. And Eli actually was kind of being picked as the next best thing for basketball.”

TA: Spaulding has only won a handful of wrestling titles, with the last being in 1984. So did it seem winning another the last three years was a realistic goal, or was it more wishful thinking where you’d really have to overachieve to do it?

O’Meara: “There was a time during most of my coaching career – and all of my athletic time at Spaulding – where that was a goal that was really out of reach. We gave Mount Anthony a pretty good run in 2009, but we gave them a run at a time when they were the lowest they’d ever been (during the dynasty). So giving them a run at a time when they’re at the top of their game, even now that’s unthinkable – even though that was my goal as an assistant coach for all those years and that’s what we were chasing. But now it’s really realistic. And it probably should have happened in 2022. And it maybe would have happened in 2021 when Essex was pretty close. This year Middlebury was pretty close and we had one of our better guys (Max Laperle) who was out for the season – and that obviously would have made it very close. Sow it’s a lot different now and it is a reality that it’s going to happen. I don’t know what year it’s going to happen and I don’t know who it’s going to be. It could be us or it could be Middlebury or it could be Essex – it could be Otter Valley. What it goes back to is, before (Scott) Legacy’s big run, there was a time when there was a handful of teams that won it. Middlebury won it for almost a decade straight before that. Spaulding won it four times. Essex won it a number of times. And now that we’ve gotten kind of back to normal and there’s more parity, I think you’ll probably see those programs have a shot at it every couple of years or every four years – more similar to what you see in basketball or hockey. But it was a reality these four years and you have to tip your hat (to the Patriots): They were able to continue to edge out people that are chasing them.”

TA: Over the last three years Eli outscored his state finals opponents by a total of 40-12. What would you say about how he prepares for those state championships and his mentality and how he came through in so many clutch situations and made it a blowout?

O’Meara: “He always had confidence in that. And I was nervous before his first title because I looked over at him and he just looked a little cold and I remember thinking, ‘Ahh, I don’t like the looks of this.’ But as soon as he stepped on the line, all of a sudden I knew we were fine. He was in his stance and he was ready to go. And I think that first state title against Asa was huge for him — and he carried it through. In fact, both last year and this year, had we wanted to take a little more risk he probably could have ended those matches early. We probably could have caught them and got more takedowns and probably tech-falled them. It wasn’t really smart strategy to take a risk with a lead like that: You don’t want to get thrown or something and end up getting pinned. But he did trust in his training and he trusted in his work ethic and he trusted in his tool set. ...His preparation is good, his warmups are proper and does things right. I would say one of his lasting legacies that he’ll leave the team is just about doing things right: the little things right, eating right, preparing right for competition, warming up properly. He’s been putting effort into those little things kids don’t always do because they’re nervous or because they don’t want to get tired. With Eli, it’s almost a professional take on getting ready for competition. And we went to big competitions and saw that. We would go to national tournaments and he would see how guys got prepared. At a high level, the best athletes prepare for matches harder than most people work out. They prepare to fire at the peak of their performance: They’re crisp and their legs can explode in an instant. And that’s not something you’ll see at lower levels where guys go out cold, or maybe they’ll do a couple of things and think they’re warmed up. Proper warmups, most of the time, look like the hardest workouts. So it was confidence in his training, but he also was doing things right so he could have confidence.”

TA: Avery Carl bumped up 157 and just dominated this year. He’s Middlebury’s all-time winningest wrestler and a two-time state champ, so how did that rivalry over the years help push Eli to the next level?

O’Meara: “Avery Carl is a great kid and he’s humble in winning. And when he lost to Eli last year in the state finals he came right up to us and congratulated us and acknowledged that Eli had done a great job. He beat Eli up a lot freshman year and he was a phenom. He was one of those youth kids where I was saying we don’t really have those. Well, Middlebury has those guys that are competing a lot when they’re young and they’re ready to go. So Avery was one of those guys and the closest Eli came to beating him freshman year was the state semifinals. Eli lost by one point on a stalling call: He got dinged for backing up a little bit in that match and he ended up losing 1-0. And then Avery had kind of an upset in the finals when he pinned Anthony Matas, who was another phenom. Some of these kids, you see them and they’ve been the best guy in the state since fourth grade – so you know about them. And the thing about Avery Carl and Asa Reis is, when you have a guy like Eli, everyone gets better. Eli has only ever wrestled guys that not only won state titles, but guys that would be all-time greats. If it wasn’t for Eli, Avery Carl would be a three-time state champion. And if it wasn’t for Eli, Asa Reis would be going for four titles next year. And then Eli doesn’t just beat them: He completely dominates them in the finals. And that’s incredible and that is the story of his career. How good is Eli? He’s so good that, when the pressure was on, he dominated guys that were some of the best from their school in the last 20 years.”

TA: When you have someone who’s as self-driven as Eli, what were some of the biggest things that you and rest of the coaching staff worked with him at practice? Or was it more like auto pilot for him?

O’Meara: “Toward the end it was, once he had matured and knew what he was doing. Early on I spent a lot of time with him. But the coach who spent the most time with him 1-on-1 after the midway point of his sophomore year was Hunter Quero. And Hunter has great knowledge. He came to us when he was a junior after he moved over from Peru (N.Y). And the Peru coaching staff is great, so he’d been around great coaching his whole life. So we had a great relationship, and when he got out of the military he came back to coach. So his first project was to take Eli and work with him 1-on-1. And there is a bit of an unsung hero in all of this: Leo Johnson. If you think about it like Lord of the Rings, if Eli is Frodo taking the ring to Mordor, Leo is Samwise. He’s not getting the shine because he wasn’t maybe quite the athlete Eli was. But they were best friends and the reason Leo wrestled was because of Eli. And Eli did a lot for Leo, but I think Leo did a lot for Eli as far as being there through the process and maybe showing him the way sometimes: When the guy that has all the answers doesn’t have an answer, and his buddy decides to take charge and show him the way. In my mind Eli probably isn’t Eli without Leo. When nobody else shows up to practice, who’s the guy? And it’s this Leo Johnson kid. And Leo didn’t know any wrestling when he started freshman year, but all of a sudden he’s right there. He worked himself from nothing into being a really good wrestler. In fact, Leo had a win over Avery Carl. It was their sophomore summer and they had a great match at Castleton and Leo dominated him. And later that summer he pinned another kid who was a phenom, so he built himself into a great practice partner for Eli. He was a kid who Eli just dominated at first because Leo didn’t know how to wrestle and he had to learn all that stuff. But in a couple years he became formidable, and Eli needed that: He needed good, formidable opponents in the room. And it just happened to be his best friend.”