He’s been successful on the mat at every level, so it shouldn’t have been a complete surprise that Chris Esquivel’s inaugural season as head coach of the GCU Club Wrestling team was a winning one as well. It’s a ‘full circle move’ as Esquivel heads into his second year at the helm as well as his 4th overall with the team. It’s also his second tour of duty at the university, since Esquivel wrestled for the Lopes’ NCAA squad back in 2010.
Esquivel’s coaching career has not only involved wrestling, but several other mat-based sports as well. His first eight years of coaching wrestling happened at two high schools on the far west edge of the Phoenix area, with six years at his high school alma mater, Estrella Foothills, and two more at Verrado. In 2011, Esquivel expanded his scope, since all at the same time, he was the wrestling coach at the Blue Collar Fighter Gym; wrestling coach, mixed martial arts trainer and personal trainer (he also boxed and fought) at Sonny’s Old School Boxing Gym in Goodyear; and the head wrestling coach at Dysart High School in El Mirage. Esquivel spent four years at DHS and three years at Sonny’s before changing gears in 2016 and becoming a boxing coach, personal trainer and nutrition advisor at Title Boxing Gym in central Phoenix, where he spent five years.
It was during his time at Title that Esquivel and the newly reformed GCU Wrestling Club crossed paths, signing on with the program in 2019 as a volunteer coach, and later taking over the program (with help from his wife, Sonia) in 2022-23. Under Esquivel’s tutelage (a two-time NCWA national qualifier himself as a college student), the women’s side of the wrestling program exploded, expanding from three to over twenty members last season, and two of them – Daniela Suttles and Samantha Tuttle – placing in the top 3 at the 2023 NCWA National Championships.
Esquivel has done all this while not only sharpening his wrestling skills, but his life-saving skills as well. On top of spending two years at Glendale Community College learning Hazmat and Fire Science (and wrestling) as well as his time at GCU in the Nursing Program, Esquivel became an EMT for Maricopa Ambulance in 2022, and since 2018, continues to serve his country working weapons armament A-10 aircraft for the United States Air Force.
A native Phoenician, Esquivel has been married to Sonia for three years and as four children.
