Spoken into Existence: WIN’s NCAA champion feature on Stanford’s Aden Valencia

Photo: Stanford’s Aden Valencia (right) won an NCAA title as a No. 10 seed to cap off his redshirt freshman campaign. Photo by Justin Hames.

Editor’s Note: This article appeared in WIN’s recently published Volume 32 Issue 7, which printed on April 1, 2026. 

By Tristan Warner

Not many had No.10-seed Aden Valencia of Stanford penciled in as the 2026 NCAA champion at 149 pounds.

Albeit a special talent in a relatively wide-open weight class, the Stanford redshirt freshman entered the national tournament with seven losses.

Despite never winning a state title in high school while competing for Ann Sobrato High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., Valencia made a name for himself at a young age in the international styles on both the age-level and Senior-level circuits.

Acknowledging freestyle is his favorite, Valencia also admitted to having an up-and-down first real college season. But even after suffering seven losses, he contends that Stanford head coach Chris Ayres, who was named NWCA National Tournament Coach of the Year, told him every day this season he was going to be a national champion.

“I think this is the best staff in the country,” Valencia said. “They’ve helped me make so many jumps. It’s been an up-and-down year, but they’ve stuck with me and believed in me.

“Ayres tells me every day, ‘You’re going to be a national champion.’ Every day, after a loss, after a win, no matter what happens, he always tells me, ‘You’re going to be a national champion.’”

The 10th-seeded Valencia knocked off No. 7 Ethan Stiles (Ohio State), No. 2 Jaxon Joy (Cornell) and No. 11 Lachlan McNeil (Michigan) on his path to the national finals.

Then, after trading takedowns in regulation with top-seeded and undefeated Shayne Van Ness of Penn State, whom Valencia suffered a 10-4 loss to back on Dec. 20, the Cardinal quickly got to his Nittany Lion foe’s legs and finished to secure the stunning sudden-victory win.

Sure, Valencia’s title was significant in the sense that a redshirt freshman and No. 10 seed with seven losses who never won a high school state title scaled the zenith of college wrestling’s proverbial mountaintop.

But keep in mind, Stanford’s program was all but terminated just five years ago. That is until Shane Griffith, wearing an inside-out singlet in the 2021 NCAA finals, won a title and brought major media attention and momentum to the “Keep Stanford Wrestling” campaign, ultimately leading to the reversal of the decision.

“When they recruited me, the previous coaching staff and the new one that came in, they recruited me for a reason,” Valencia said. “And they thought I could bring this program up. I feel like I’ve helped do that this weekend.”

In addition to crediting his coaches, teammates and a heart-to-heart conversation with his parents over dinner after he suffered a midseason loss to NC State’s Koy Buesgens, Valencia said he continued to make tweaks all season. Regardless of a win or a loss, he kept going back to the drawing board with his coaches and making corrections. Eventually, it all clicked, just at the right time, too.

And as surprised as many wrestling fans may have been to see a 10th-seeded Stanford Cardinal atop the podium on Saturday night in Rocket Arena, to Valencia, he manifested the moment. Quite literally, he saw it happen a month in advance and then got to live out his premonition in real time.

“For my class, I wrote a story — it’s a story you have to come up with. And I decided to make it about a wrestler who goes up and down throughout his year and has to figure himself out. And the format of it is a six-month season condensed into a seven-minute match, and I’ll read the last part of it. I believe in manifestation, and I believe in the law of attraction.

“Three points fly up. A few seconds left on the clock and the crowd is on their feet. I close my eyes. For one beat, everything disappears. The lights, the noise, the pressure, the chaos, and all I can hear is my own breath, the same breath I use to calm myself before every war. Then it hits me all at once. The whistle, the war, my coaches screaming and my teammates going wild on the sideline. I open my eyes, and the scoreboard confirms what my body already knows. I did it.

“Every doubt, every bad week. Every late night. Every loss that made me question who I was, all of it crashes over me and breaks into something new. I’m laughing and crying at the same time, pounding my chest. I point to the crowd, point to my corner, I flex every emotion. My soul is let out by a scream that follows. Six months determined in seven minutes. I feel clean and my work is done.

“I wrote that a month ago. I manifested this moment. I dreamed of it. I knew I could do it. I believed in myself. And I’m proud to say I did it.”