Santa Barbara High's Bryce Vinion
Bryce Vinion cleans up on the wrestling mat and in mathematics.
The Santa Barbara High senior wrestler was honored Monday as the Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table Scholar-Athlete of the Year at the school.
Vinion carries a 4.7 grade point average, is a National Merit Scholar semifinalist and he is a member of the Math Honors Society.
He’s the captain of the wrestling team.
Last year, he went undefeated in the Channel League and won the league championship at 189 pounds. He finished fourth in the CIF division finals and qualified for the CIF Masters Meet.
His goal this season is to get to the State Meet.
Vinion hopes to attend MIT or Stanford. He said he’d like to get a PHd in psychology.
“I like to take things apart and put them back together and the human mind is the greatest of all of those,” he said.
Athletic director Nan Verkaik said Vinion tutors students who are having trouble in math.
“The most amazing thing he’s done academically is he took the SAT in math for the first time and he scored a perfect score,” said Verkaik.
Vinion thanked all the wrestling coaches in town: Tony Becerra at San Marcos, Anthony Califano at Dos Pueblos, Jesse Plowman, the former coach at Santa Barbara, and his father, Jeffrey.
“He’s been in my corner my entire wrestling career and wouldn’t have done it without him,” Vinion said of his father.
