Like a typical parent, Renee Varner sometimes worries about her son, Jake, when he steps onto the wrestling mat.

“I’m nervous; I’m just a parent,” she said. “I love watching it. I just hope for the best, obviously, and that something doesn’t happen [to him].”

His opponents are the ones who should be worried.

Varner, 21, is stronger, smarter and more experienced after finishing second at the NCAA Tournament as a freshman.

The ISU sophomore wrestler is the No. 1-ranked 184-pounder in the country and is 17-0 for the season – a record that doesn’t include three wins over former NCAA All-Americans.

Varner controlled Minnesota’s Roger Kish, who was then ranked second, all through a 2-0 win in the NWCA All-Star Meet in Eugene, Ore. on Nov. 19, 2007. Kish beat Varner twice last season, but the Cyclone returned the favor by beating the Golden Gopher again two weeks later.

He then pinned 26-year-old former Nebraska standout Travis Pascoe at the Midlands Open in late December on his way to the tournament finals, where he avenged an earlier loss to Northwestern’s Jake Herbert in last year’s NCAA finals.

Herbert wrestled unattached at the tournament and is taking an Olympic redshirt year to train for the 2008 Summer Games, preserving his final season of collegiate eligibility.

Varner gave the Wildcat a rude welcome back to collegiate competition, throwing Herbert to his back briefly in a 3-1 overtime win.

Herbert dominated the NCAA championship match en route to a 6-0 decision.

“My goal was to win, and I didn’t,” Varner said of that match. “So that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t wrestle a whole lot of freestyle during the summer, because I felt like something got taken away from me, so I just focused on [folkstyle]. I always think back on that match, what I should have done different, could have done different and try to fix things. And I obviously fixed stuff, because I wrestled him again and beat him.”

Varner competed in just one freestyle tournament, the U.S. Nationals, focusing on training in the folkstyle form which is used in collegiate wrestling.

He has bullied his competition ever since.

After winning his All-Star match, his fourth match of the season, Varner engaged Kish in a shoving match as time expired, later claiming that Kish grabbed his headgear on the way off the mat.

Varner frequently pushes his opponent’s head into the mat while trying to apply his trademark move – the half nelson, a fundamental yet brutally effective maneuver he often employs.

In his last match – a 14-2 major decision victory over Wisconsin’s 14th-ranked Trevor Brandvold – Varner scored four takedowns and four stalling points. In the first period, Varner shot in and picked up one of the Badger’s legs, then punishing a successful attempt by Brandvold to reach the edge of mat by lifting Brandvold’s foot above his shoulder and pushing him out of bounds.

Despite his wrestling persona, Varner is known to be friendly and quiet off the mat.

“He is really actually a nice guy outside of the wrestling room” said head coach Cael Sanderson. “But he is consistently mean in practice. When he wrestles, it is time to go – you know, it’s game on, and that’s what it takes. You’ve got to be mean to an extent but you’ve got to be mean.”

Varner has beaten six ranked opponents this season and is one of 10 wrestlers who has wrestled 10 matches or more and remained undefeated.

During the summer and in practice, the 6-foot-1 Cyclone said he has worked on putting more moves in his offensive arsenal, but he is known nationally for his defense.

Only one Div. I wrestler, Rider’s 18th-ranked Doug Umbehauer, has taken Varner down this season.

“[Varner] is like a brick wall to move,” said senior 197-pounder David Bertolino, “and he stands up pretty tall. You think you can get to his legs, and you shoot, and his legs aren’t there. He is solid, and he doesn’t get out of position.”

Varner is the first ISU freshman to reach the NCAA finals since his head coach. He works out with Sanderson on a regular basis, which is a primary reason why Varner is at Iowa State and not his intial choice of Oklahoma State.

In high school in Bakersfield, Calif., Varner pinned his opponent in 132 of 169 matches, compiling a 159-10 record. He wrestled at 140 pounds as a freshman, 152 pounds as a sophomore, 171 pounds as a junior and 189 pounds as a senior. He placed fourth as a freshman and second as a sophomore before winning two state titles.

His father, Steve, was a wrestling coach at Bakersfield High School before leaving the position during Jake’s infancy. Varner was the third of four children, but he is the only son in a competitive family.

“I hate to lose, his father hated to lose, his sisters hate to lose,” said Renee, who played volleyball and competed in track and field at Cal State Northridge.

“When my kids were younger, we played games and stuff, and I never let them beat me just because they were younger. Once they beat me, they knew they beat me, and they were happy about it. I can’t stand to lose, even if it is to my kids. I think it was just always in our house. His sisters lifted a lot of weights, they were [track and field] throwers . he has always had just that mental edge of ‘No one is going to beat me.'”

Sanderson said Varner is committed to being the best and that he trains just as hard in August as he would before the national tournament.

“He is good in every position,” Sanderson said. “And if you’re good in every position, and then you have the right attitude – which he does – then you’re going to be tough to beat.

“He wants to wrestle me every day, he wants to wrestle the coaches and the best guys that he can find in the room every day, and the guys that do that are the ones that get better faster and remain at the top.”