Not only a football player

Marquise Overton, a defensive tackle on the Sooners’ football team, is back wrestling after a three-year hiatus and posted his first collegiate win last week.

NORMAN — Marquise Overton knows all about big boy wrestling.

It’s the saying Jenks wrestling coach Ray Weis used to motivate Overton during his prolific heavyweight high school career.

Overtime matches, extra physicality, grueling workouts: that was big boy wrestling.

And that’s what Overton had to channel to get his first collegiate win last week in a triple overtime match against Northern Colorado’s Robert Winters.

“It definitely helps with my confidence a lot,” Overton said of capturing his first win. “College wrestling is way different than high school.”

Overton, also a defensive tackle on the football team, is back on the mat after a three-year hiatus.

Though he won a 6A state wrestling title at Jenks in 2015 and was ranked as the No. 20 heavyweight by Intermat during his senior season, Overton initially put his wrestling career on hold when he arrived in Norman to focus on football.

But entering his sophomore season, Overton knew he was ready to get back on the mat.

After wrapping up his junior football campaign with the Sooners where he started nine games, Overton was finally able to don a singlet again.

“You only go through college once and I wanted to enjoy everything while I was here,” Overton said. “So why not wrestle and do something else that I love?”

“Que is definitely competitive and he’s here to help,” wrestling coach Lou Rosselli said. “I think that his stamina and his energy level emerged from himself. Obviously they do some things in football to help him prepare for that, but a lot of it was will — will to compete and win a wrestling match.”