James Belleville looked around at the gym up the stairs at Capital High School as about a dozen wrestlers hit the mats during a Jan. 22 practice, a day after a match with Central Kitsap was cancelled due to injuries and illnesses on both teams.
Belleville, in his eighth year as Capital’s head coach, reflected as he watched his team working on fundamentals and technique, and he made a realization.
“We’ve had the toughest season I’ve ever coached in my life,” he said.
There was certainly some exhaustion in the declaration from Belleville, a four-time state champion at Black Hills High School and former Division I wrestler. His team was banged up with the postseason just two weeks away.
But the 2025-26 season being the toughest Belleville had ever coached was by design.
The caliber of talent and work ethic in the room demanded a gauntlet of a schedule to continue to produce not only state-championship contenders but national contenders.
Entering this season, Capital returned a state champion in Lazarus McEwen, who earned the 106-pound state title as a freshman last winter, Patrick Halpin, a two-time state placer and reigning state runner-up in the 144-pound division, and three other state qualifiers in Wesley Fox, Benjamin Parris and Harland Warrior.
The Cougars also added former River Ridge Hawk Haziel Soto, who earned a state championship in the 120-pound class in last year’s Mat Classic, for his final prep season.
The quartet of McEwen, Soto, Halpin, and Fox — dubbed the “core group” of the team by Belleville — was the driving force behind planning Capital’s rugged schedule this season that featured tournaments in four states, including national events in Utah, Oregon and Nevada.
“They wanted to compete at the big tournaments. We planned our schedule on what they wanted to do this year,” Belleville said. “They wanted to grind and go get competition in getting ready for winning state titles. That’s what our goal was.”
Injuries were an unfortunate side effect of the grueling competition, but Belleville expects his guys to be ready for the Puget Sound League tournament, which begins Feb. 6 at Silas High School in Tacoma. After all, by the time they hit the mats, 17 days will have passed since their last competition, a duel against Lakes.
During that time span, the Cougars have been focusing on getting healthy and honing in on the basics in practice, ramping up the physicality as the competition grows closer.
The elevated schedule has paid off for the team in the win column. McEwen has won 19 of his 20 matches, Soto is 38-6, Halpin is 37-8, and Fox sits at 33-10. Four other wrestlers — Braxton McCullough, Hunter Cannon, Parris and Warrior — have winning records entering the league tournament. Easton Bramble has also impressed his coaching staff and has won 13 matches so far this season.
Under Belleville’s leadership, three Capital wrestlers have won four state titles, and a total of seven wrestlers have placed in the top seven at state. Capital has a long history of state glory, including winning a team state title in 2001, but Belleville believes the bond this team has made in practice and its strength in numbers will push the Cougars toward its postseason goals.
“We’re all here together. We’re up here for two hours a day. Let’s not waste the time,” Belleville said. “Let’s not put fake effort in. Let’s not just check the box. Let’s get some reps in. Let’s push the pace and push the effort. If you fail up here, that’s fine. But don’t fail down there in front of everyone.”
Capital is poised for one of the most productive weekends of the 3A programs competing at Mat Classic XXXVII at the Tacoma Dome on Feb. 19 and Feb. 20, led by its nucleus of stars and its bevy of talented members of the supporting cast.
Lazarus McEwen: Next in Line
Longtime followers of Capital boys wrestling will instantly recognize the last name McEwen. Lazarus’ older brother Ezekiel won back-to-back state titles for the Cougars in 2023 and 2024 after placing third in 2022. Their cousin Maverick moved to Olympia from Butte, Montana, and spent one year at Capital, winning a state championship in 2023 in his lone season in Washington before winning a second straight title back in Butte.
Lazarus stormed onto the high school scene as a freshman last season, going 49-1 and finishing with a state championship. Only one of his five Mat Classic matches saw a second period, and that was the first-place match, where McEwen defeated Kent Meridian’s Farzad Karimi with a pin in just under four minutes.
But for McEwen, who comes from a long family lineage of success in wrestling, the Mat Classic stage seemed pretty puny compared to what he’s endured on the national stage. He won the Brian Keck Memorial Preseason National title in Iowa and has been competing nationally since he was about 10 years old. His only two losses in his prep career have come in the Reno Tournament of Champions to nationally ranked wrestlers.
McEwen began wrestling at the age of just 4 as a Montana resident, learning from his father David, who also helps coach the Capital team and Lazarus’ year-round youth club Mat Demon Wrestling Club, based in Auburn. David was a four-time state placer at Butte High School in Montana and two-time state finalist.
So when McEwen was faced with the bright lights of the Tacoma Dome last February, it simply didn’t faze him.
“It’s not any different than the other tournaments I’ve been to. Just gotta stay focused,” he said.
The McEwen trio of Lazarus, Ezekiel and Maverick is responsible for five state championships, and even though Lazarus is just getting started on the high school stage, he already knows where he stands on the McEwen family totem pole.
“Mav was down here trying to talk about how he and Zeke were better, but I think I’m far better than them,” Lazarus said.
David thinks that could be a fact and not just an opinion when Lazarus’ prep career is said and done.
“I think he’ll be a four-time state champion in Washington. I think he’ll end up being a national champion,” he said. “I knew he was going to do good [at state] because we wrestle nationally. We’re always traveling, to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, wherever it may be. We see top-level competition all the time, and he was ranked nationally before the high school season started. Winning a state title is good, but I knew that his potential is beyond just winning a state title in the state of Washington.”
Soto, Lazarus’ practice partner, called Lazarus the "hardest working person I know,” while Belleville added that Lazarus’ focus and determination sets him apart from other young wrestlers.
“He doesn’t feel the pressure. He chases the competition,” Belleville said of McEwen. “What separates him, and what separates a lot of these guys, is not what you do in high school. It’s what you do outside of high school. High school programs can only give you so much time. He works hard, keeps quiet, pushes the pace, and doesn’t question anything. He’s here to wrestle and compete.”
So what’s in the McEwen blood that produces winners on the mat? According to David, it’s an embedded work ethic and competitive drive to be great.
“It’s growing up and learning a quality work ethic and learning to overcome adversity and continue to push yourself and get better in life,” he said. “Those were values that were instilled in me, and I carried it on to my upbringing and my boys.”
While McEwen has been sidelined for a couple of weeks due to injuries, he is working to add misdirection moves to his repertoire in practice, going up against a fellow state champion in Soto every day not only at the Capital practice but at their club up north, as well.
Haziel Soto: The New Guy
Soto transferred to Capital ahead of his senior season after three years at River Ridge, which included three straight trips to the Mat Classic. He explained that the move ensured that his father was closer to his job and Soto was closer to South Puget Sound Community College, as he is a Running Start student earning college credit while still in high school.
Soto has been an immediate spark plug to an already talented and chiseled Capital team, both on and off the mat. Coaches and teammates have credited his willingness to improve and help others in practice, and his 38-6 record on the mat speaks for itself.
“It’s a lot more of a hard-working feeling in here. I feel like we’re a lot more connected in here,” Soto said of Capital’s program. “The attitude everybody has is much higher. You can tell that everybody here, even if they don’t find the highest level of success, they put their all into the sport.”
Soto said his senior year has been the year in which he has improved the most, which is a trend that has continued throughout his wrestling journey. Picking up the sport of wrestling in middle school from his older brother Zariel, Soto snuck into the Mat Classic bracket as a freshman as the lone Hawk to make the trip to Tacoma. He earned two victories but didn’t place, concluding his debut season with an 8-5 record.
After starting his prep career in the 106-pound bracket, Soto jumped up to 113 as a sophomore. He made his return to the Mat Classic and battled his way to the championship match before falling by decision.
Unsatisfied with the second-place finish, Soto immediately went back to work in search of a state championship.
“Taking second, it’s a good accomplishment to have, but I think I can speak for most people at the highest level when I say you want that first place,” he said. “I told myself that it was something I felt like I needed to do because my parents put a lot of sacrifice into me so I could get as far as possible. Starting right from the spring after that season, I was right back at it the following week trying to fix any mistake and every little tweak I could.”
The work and attention to detail paid off, as Soto came back and finished his junior campaign with a 38-1 record and a state title at 120 pounds. He described the moment as “a weight off my shoulders” and “probably the greatest feeling I’ve ever felt,” and he’s chasing that glory once again at a new school.
Belleville praised Soto for how he pushes the pace for himself and for the whole team in practice.
“When he wants to, he will. If he wants to take you down, he will take you down. If he wants to score, he will score,” Belleville said. “He can control the match and the pace when he wants to, and if he does, he’s unstoppable.”
Soto has wrestled alongside three of his teammates in McEwen, Halpin and Fox for the past two years at the Mat Demon Wrestling Club. After their two-hour Capital practices, they travel together to Auburn to finish the day with another two-to-three-hour practice.
“That core is almost like a family to us. We like to treat this whole team like a family, but I feel like on the inside, we have a little bit of a stronger connection because of that club wrestling, and we’ve spent time outside of this room with each other,” Soto said of the core four. “That made the switch from schools a lot easier for me.”
Patrick Halpin: The Underdog
Halpin is no stronger to the Mat Classic podium, placing fifth in the 144-pound bracket in 2024 before a runner-up finish in 2025. He’s been wrestling since elementary school, but knee surgery halted his wrestling journey until his freshman year at Capital. His older brother Joshua was also a state placer at Capital. Halpin’s uncle Adam was also part of the 2001 state championship team and won an individual title at 160 pounds. His great uncle Dan was a two-time 1A state champion at Royal in the early 1970s.
Like Soto, Patrick Halpin has seen consistent growth as a prep wrestler. With back-to-back deep runs in the final weekend of the season, the bright lights of the stage don’t appear too bright anymore.
“It’s a little more calming. Before, I was a little bit nervous, and now that I’ve been there, I’ve been on the highest stage you can get in Washington wrestling,” Halpin said. “It’s not really as nerve wracking.”
Halpin’s motivation is not only to move up a spot on the podium and be the last wrestler standing on Feb. 20. He heard chatter in online forums about how he is “overrated” and “that I didn’t deserve anything.”
“The motivation has been to put in hard work to prove those people wrong,” he said. “Most of the time, it’s probably people who don’t really know what it’s like. They don’t know what it feels like to have hundreds of eyes looking at you while you’re down there on the mat. Jealousy is probably a bit of it. On top of being called overrated and whatnot, it’s also been a dream of mine to go win a state title.”
This season, Halpin is focusing on the mental game just as much as the technical and physical side of wrestling. He admitted that falling short in the state finals a year ago took a toll on his mental health, but he said the core group of accomplished wrestlers and the rich tradition of success at Capital led by Belleville and the coaching staff have built his confidence heading into his final postseason run.
“We have a great coaching staff. It’s always been about hard work and mental toughness,” Halpin said. “Recently, there’s been more of a positive focus. If someone loses a match, you don’t get down on them, but rather uplift them.”
Belleville said Halpin has steadily developed into a leadership role after coming into the program as a quiet freshman.
“Every year, he gets a little bit more vocal. We had a talk a few weeks ago,” Belleville said. “I told him, ‘Patrick, this is your year. This is your team. You need to get them where you want.’ He’s been very well-rounded at getting them all to come together, to work hard, to put the effort in and showing them where they need to be.”
Halpin said the core four have adopted a united mentality to prove their doubters wrong, which he added comes with the territory of success. The Mat Classic presents that golden opportunity to hush the naysayers once and for all.
“We’ve all felt it. No one on this team is undefeated. We’ve all had our losses. I definitely see us coming together against that outside noise,” Halpin said.
The Supporting Cast
Fox, a junior, has a pair of Mat Classic trips on his resume, and he picked up two wins in the 144-pound bracket a season ago. So far this season, he sports a 33-10 record, including a second-place finish in the Pat Alexander Memorial Tournament on Dec. 20, 2025, and two third-place finishes.
Bramble, Cameron Jenkins, Parris and Warrior were four athletes that Belleville said have surprised him this season and have scored points against tough competition.
“We’ve taken them to some of those tough tournaments, and they’re winning some matches. They’re getting into tough battles with people that are very tough across the state,” he said.
But the totals in the wins and losses columns don’t matter to Belleville before the calendar flips to February. The final month of the season shows the Capital coaching staff what their kids are made of when it matters most, and this February, Belleville believes he has a group that can do something special.
“Usually we try to start peaking now. We don’t care about the wins and losses prior to February. Those are just part of getting here,” he said. “February is when we really start caring about, can we win this match, and how do we win this match?”
Capital will next compete at the Puget Sound League Tournament on Friday, Feb. 6 and Saturday, Feb. 7 at Silas High School in Tacoma.
