Spending part of his childhood in Orlando, Noah Castillo had a lot of time to get acclimated to his Puerto Rican culture as the Florida city has one of the largest communities in the country.
He’d lost a small part of that when he moved to Chattanooga to wrestle for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, but recently he’d gotten a chance to rediscover some of those roots when he was invited to wrestle for Puerto Rico in the U23 World Championships in Albania.
He was there with UTC head coach Kyle Ruschell, which gave him an opportunity to build the relationship with the two. Some of the other wrestlers on the Puerto Rican team had wrestled collegiately as well, which also gave him an opportunity to build friendships.
“You find yourself getting distanced from your heritage, where you’re from, your roots,” said Castillo, whose mother is Puerto Rican. “To be able to bring Puerto Rican wrestling and be able to bring family into it was cool. They’d bought shirts and helped me get out there, so being able to bring my whole family together meant a lot.
“Now, whenever I go back home, I feel like people are supporting me more and they understand that I’m still competing at a high level.”