Lucas Stoddard has won a gold medal for the United States in freestyle wrestling.

Stoddard defeated Canada’s Jorawar Dhinsa, 2-1, in the gold medal match in the U23 heavyweight bout at the Pan-American games in Rionegro, Columbia, on June 22. The win helped Team USA win the U23 team title.

A state champion at Berkshire, Stoddard lost to Dhinsa, 12-5, in pool play earlier in the tournament. But after defeating Puerto Rico’s Jonovan Smith in the semifinals, Stoddard defeated Singh, 2-1, in the rematch to win the goal medal and put an exclamation point on Team USA’s performance.

Stoddard and his teammates were on a flight back from Columbia and he was thus unavailable for comment. But his father — Berkshire Local School District John Stoddard — was waiting for his flight to leave when reached by The News-Herald and said seeing his son win a gold medal at the Pan-American games was “beyond words.

“We went just expecting for him to do his best and having a good showing against international competition,” Stoddard said. “There weren’t expectations of him winning a medal, let alone a gold medal.”

Prior to leading for the Pan-American games, Lucas Stoddard told The News-Herald he didn’t wrestle his first freestyle match until 2022, adding, “if you would have told me when I was in high school, let alone two weeks ago, that I was going to wrestle for Team USA, I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Once in Rionegro, Stoddard wasted no time showing how far he had come in freestyle wrestling. While he did lose to Singh in the opening match of pool play, he defeated Venezuela’s Luis Enrique, 10-4, in his second match at Peru’s Diego Sebastian, 5-1, in his third match. The top two in each pool advanced to the final bracket, where Stoddard defeated Smith, 5-0, to set up a rematch against Dhinsa, who defeated Brazil’s Gabriel DeSousa-Silva, 3-2, in another semifinal match.

The first time he faced (Dhinsa), he got hit with two arm spins, and that was eight points,” John Stoddard said. “The second match, Lucas avoided the arm spin. That was big for him. .. It was really cool to see the real-time adjustments Lucas made.”

Stoddard is the starting heavyweight for the Army West Point wrestling team. While West Point assistant coach Scott Green was in Rionegro to help coach Stoddard, two other high-level coaches did the bulk of coaching West Point’s heavyweight — Former Iowa All-American Tony Cassioppi and former Lock Haven All-American Chance Marsteller.

“The coaching Lucas got down here was incredible,” John Stoddard said.

This story will be updated.