Kane County Chronicle 2023-24 Male Athlete of the Year: St. Charles East’s Ben Davino

SAINT CHARLES — Ben Davino had two goals when he started wrestling for St. Charles East.

His first goal was achieved in his junior season, when he helped the Saints secure their first team state title in program history.

And entering his senior season, his second goal of being a four-time state champ was nearly in his grasp. With three titles already under his belt, he wanted to make sure to do it in a way similar to how he wrestles.

In dominating fashion.

“I just wanted to be more dominant than I was the year before, just because I’m always striving to be better,” Davino said. “If you always win every match by one point, you might not be the best wrestler in the bracket. So I definitely wanted to spread that gap between me and my opponent.”

And when he got on the mat, he proved that the gap existed, no matter where he went.

In his senior season, Davino went a perfect 50-0 on the mat with 18 wins coming by falls and another 18 from tech falls, won two of the biggest high school wrestling tournaments in the Welsh Ironman and Cheesehead Invitational, and won his fourth individual state championship, each in a different weight class, to become just the 15th wrestler in IHSA history to achieve the feat.

Considering Davino’s athletic resume throughout his senior season, and his entire career, he has been named the Kane County Chronicle’s 2023-24 Male Athlete of the Year.

“Even as a freshman, he was setting the tone for the room and raised the bar even higher for us,” St. Charles East wrestling coach Jason Potter said. “He strived for perfection for himself, and it just pushed everybody around him. Everybody wanted to set their goals higher when they saw him setting his goals and achieving great things.”

Potter said that with someone as talented as Davino on his roster, he had to do whatever he could to find him a challenge, whether it be moving him up a few weight classes or even traveling to out-of-state competitions to wrestle some of the best programs.

But even with the schedule overhaul and numerous challenges Potter put up for him, Davino still managed to finish his high school career with a record of 181-1.

“The joke I had with his dad was that I was going to do everything I could to find him a loss,” Potter said. “Running perfect wasn’t as important as getting him prepared for bigger things that he wants to do. He wants to win NCAA titles and be a world champion. He wants to make the Olympics and win a gold medal.

“He wants to go challenge himself and put himself in those tough opportunities. Sometimes you see people that are good at what they do and are conservative and don’t want to risk the chance of losing, and that was just never his mentality.”

His only loss came his sophomore year, losing 5-2 to Marc-Anthony McGowan in the 120-pound finals of the 2021 Welsh Ironman Tournament in what Potter described as the biggest stage he had been on up to that point.

Davino thinks that the lone loss of his high school career gave him the boost of confidence he needed to finish his career on a 136-match win streak, with two of those coming against McGowan.

“I think it showed me that I was right with the best guys in the country and even the world,” Davino said. “It gave me a little bit of clarity in my head that I could be the best in the country at my weight while I’m in high school.”

With his wrestling career at Ohio State beginning in the near future, Davino is excited to not only wrestle against some of the best college programs in Penn State, Michigan and Iowa, but also to be sharing a training room with a national champion in Jesse Mendez.

“This is stuff that I watched on TV when I was younger and said ‘that’s going to be me one day,’” Davino said. “So just being here and being able to execute it while having partners that are going to push me to be better, it’s just awesome.”

Meanwhile, St. Charles East will have to deal with a wrestling room without Davino, as well as three-time state champ Jayden Colon. But through his legacy on the mat, as well as the work that he’s done within the Illinois Kid Wrestling Federation, Potter is excited to see the effect that Davino has had on St. Charles East wrestling for years to come.

“These young kids see all that he’s done and are striving to do the same thing. They’ve had the privilege to sit back and work with him, but also watch his career and see what he’s been able to accomplish,” Potter said. “We’ve got a few kids, even middle schoolers, who are extremely talented that look up to him and trained with him. He took time out to go work with those kids, so they have an even stronger connection.

“It’d be one thing for them to look up to a guy in the community, but they’ve all had a chance to work right alongside him, and it’s going to be fun to see. He’s going to have a ripple effect for years to come.”