JOURNAL METRO MALE ATHLETE OF THE YEAR: Mason Posa, La Cueva

This seems like the right time to introduce Paige Posa.

Her younger brother, you’ve likely heard of him. Mason Posa. Probably New Mexico’s most elite multi-sport prep athlete, a future Wisconsin Badger football player, a four-time state wrestling champion and, today, coronation as the Albuquerque Journal’s Metro Male Athlete of the Year for the 2024-25 school year.

“He’s one of a kind,” former football teammate Cam Dyer said.

Posa was an All-State linebacker and undefeated on the mat for the Bears.

But, in order to help unlock some of the recipe that made the recent La Cueva High graduate the walking personification of an immovable object, the story’s got to circle back to his older sister.

“Mason never had older brothers,” said his father, Javier. “We lived in Oklahoma; we didn’t have cousins (either).”

Posa, himself a multiple state wrestling champion from Santa Fe High who wrestled collegiately at the University of Oklahoma and later coached there. He did, however, have a bit of a secret weapon in his oldest daughter.

“Mason hates to lose,” Javier Posa said. “He hates losing more than he loves to win.”

Paige, herself a good athlete, was a co-conspirator in her father’s plan.

“Every time Paige and Mason would compete,” Javier said, “I would pull Paige to the side and say, ‘Make sure he loses. I don’t care what you have to do. I don’t care if you cheat. Whatever happens, you make sure your brother loses.’ ”

Really, dad? Paige answered.

But she won, time and again, whatever the siblings were doing.

“I wanted him to get a taste of losing, and hating it,” Javier Posa said. “He would come crying to me when he was a little kid. You’re crying because you lost to your sister? Don’t lose anymore.”

It was in those younger years where Mason Posa’s singular engine was on the building blocks.

And it was a trait he cultivated as a linebacker for the Bears football program, and also on the mat, where he lost only three matches in four seasons, and zero in the last two.

“Mason hates to lose and that’s what separates him,” his father said. “He does anything and everything that needs to be done to make sure he wins. That’s him.”

He arrived earlier this week to Madison, Wisconsin, to begin his college career with the Badgers.

Posa was under the spotlight and recruiting microscope almost from the first day he put on the La Cueva football jersey in the late summer of 2021.

In his first varsity game — in the first quarter, as a matter of fact — he registered a pick-6 against Volcano Vista. He’s been a dynamo on La Cueva’s defense for over 50 games, and was frequently important on special teams, too. Last season, he even played a bit of offense at crucial times for the Bears.

“It’s crazy how it’s flown by so quickly,” said Posa, 19.

He was a multiple All-State selection on defense, and won state at four different weights on the mat — including a dramatic jump to the heavyweight division last February, where he still rolled to a first-place medal.

“I think I left my mark every single year, and it was an amazing ride,” Posa said.

Posa was 43-0 on the mat last season, and was the recipient of the Dave Schultz award as New Mexico’s top senior wrestler.

But Posa was the state’s top wrestler last season in any class, at any age, and at any weight; his internal bar for success speaks volumes about how he is wired. He lost two matches as a sophomore, and that still bothers him, he said. He didn’t pin every one of his 43 opponents as a senior. He has regrets about that as well.

“Ultimate competitor,” said Dyer, now a freshman at Arizona State.

And when the key is in the ignition, Dyer said in so many words, there was little anyone could do to interfere with Posa’s laser focus.

“He’s obviously a rare talent,” Dyer said. “He has the ability to turn it on and off, he just never turns it off.”

La Cueva’s football coach, Brandon Back, echoes, almost exactly, the words of Posa’s father as he reflected on the uniqueness of Mason. Namely, a relentless competitive spirit.

“Roll up a paper into a ball and throw it in the trash can,” Back said. “He wants to win.”

This attribute, Back said, was evident in game film — film that he said caught recruiters’ eyes.

“He always knew he was gonna be in on the play,” Back said. “The college guys, the No. 1 thing that impressed them was the number of tackles he had from the back side.”

Posa’s energy is usually palpable, and Back said this was evident even on non-game days.

“No off switch,” Back said.

Javier Posa said he first noticed that his son would be special when he was a young boy. The family had traveled in from Oklahoma at the same time as a prominent AAU national wrestling tournament.

Wrestling was long in the Posa family blood, going back to his grandfather, and later his father and uncles.

“Growing up around a wrestling room, just knowing, yeah, I’m gonna have to be doing this,” he said. “I’ve grown up with this. It’s been natural.”

Mason, then 5, was entered on the fly at that AAU event, and he placed fifth out of 36 kids in his bracket.

“I told my wife, ‘Hey, there’s something special about Mason,’ “ Javier said. He also saw it when Mason played soccer. And, later when Mason moved into youth football . He already had buzz by the time he was a freshman at La Cueva.

“Growing up doing YAFL, I knew I was a good player, but I was never known as, oh, he's great,” Posa said.

Back said Posa was continually pushed in his four seasons at La Cueva. Back said La Cueva coached him as hard as his father coached him.

And both men believe Mason will flourish at Wisconsin, where the linebacker room will be filled with lots of Mason Posas.

“I hope it’s hard and difficult,” Back said. “I’m excited to see the level of his competitiveness rise to the occasion when it gets really hard.”

How Posa will transition from high school football, where he was a dominant figure, to a national program is most certainly the biggest question surrounding his next few years.

“We went to colleges and (Wisconsin) was the only program that really asked my son where he saw himself and asked him what he wanted to do,” Javier Posa said. “Mason said, ‘I want to graduate in three years, and I want to be a first-round draft pick and be a Butkus winner.

“... I told Mason, if he wants to accomplish what he wants to accomplish, it’s the little things that will set (him) apart. He’s going to do very well at Wisconsin.”

Posa has always been very casually confident about his prep football status in New Mexico, starting with the day the hometown Lobos offered him a scholarship, giving him validation about his ambition to someday play Division I football.

He committed to Wisconsin last June, and signed with the Badgers in December. And now, he begins, in a way from scratch 1,500 miles from home.

“My mindset is to just outwork all of them,” said the 6-foot-4, 220-pound Posa, who is looking to gain additional weight before opening day.

And he has grand designs on creating a name as familiar to Madison-ites in college as he did with Albuquerqueans while at La Cueva.

“I wanna play, I want to be a freshman All-American,” he said plainly. “I want my name to be … where everyone knows Mason Posa. I know it’s not gonna come easy, it won’t be all sunshine and rainbows. I’ll have to work for it and I’m excited to compete.”

About Mason Posa

School: La Cueva

Age: 19

Born: Santa Fe

GPA: 3.8

Sports: Football, wrestling

College: Posa has signed to play football at Wisconsin

Parents: Javier and Debbie

Siblings: Paige, 21; Kendall, 17

Did you know?: This is the first of two items in our info boxes that will mention Sandia High girls wrestler Jaden Meadows. When Meadows and Posa were younger, the two sometimes wrestled against one another, largely because Meadows didn’t have many girls to compete with.

The beautiful game: Posa once as a boy was highly skilled at soccer; this was, in fact, the first sport in which he competed in a league, “It’s so funny,” his father said. “I would tell him and all his friends, just kick the ball in the net.”

Standards: Mason Posa in a nutshell? Just turn to his dad for the description. “He wants perfection. He demands perfection,” Javier Posa said.

Achilles heel: You’ll be happy to know that there is a sport that stymies Posa and causes him some consternation: Golf. He admits to fighting a slice when he plays, but he does boast that he has a “really, really good” short game. “I like to golf a lot,” he said. “I gotta be in a scramble.”

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