PLYMOUTH – He picked up the sport a little later than most, but competing in amateur wrestling continues to be a great choice for Vincent Renault. A member of the Plymouth Athletic Hall of Fame, as well as the Massachusetts High School Wrestling Hall of Fame, Renault will add another athletic accolade this month when he is inducted into the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy Athletic Hall of Fame.
“I did get a late start to wrestling when I picked it up in eighth grade, but wrestling has always been my sport since then,” said Renault, breaking out the famous Dan Gable quote that once you’ve wrestled, everything else is easy. “I still 100 precent use the lessons I learned from those years of wrestling in my normal life. Wrestling taught me so many things about persistence, setting your mind on a goal, and putting in all of the hard work to get there.”
According to former Plymouth South Wrestling Head Coach Marc Loranger, Renault’s work ethic was evident every time he stepped on the mat.
“You almost never get to say a wrestler is an automatic win, but Vinnie was as close to that as I’ve ever had in the program,” Loranger said in a story about Renault published back in 2020. “He rose to whatever challenge was put in front of him and it made him better. It was incredible to see the way that he dominated some good wrestlers in his junior and senior years. He may very well be the best high school wrestler I’ve ever seen come out of this area.”
While wrestling is often considered an individual sport, Renault has a different take on it.
“There were so many people that played a huge part in everything I accomplished as a wrestler. Nobody can do it all alone. My stepfather, John O’Connor, was the one who first introduced me to the sport of wrestling. My dad, Jeff Renault, drove me all over the place each week for additional wrestling training, and then my mom Caroline O’Conner was always my biggest fan as well as my dietician” during the years when he was wrestling, said Renault. “Then you have all the work that Coach Loranger and his staff did with me at Plymouth South as well as all the coaches at King’s Point that helped me become an NCAA champion. So many people were a part of any success I had.”
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Starting at 119 pounds, and eventually climbing the ladder to the 152-pound weight class, the 2007 graduate holds Plymouth South’s career record for wins (157), many of them coming by pin. He’s a two-time New England champion and was undefeated in his junior and senior seasons until finally losing in the National High School Wrestling Championships.
“Having the opportunity to wrestle at Nationals was a real eye-opener for me. The level of wrestling in some other parts of the country is really intense,” Renault remembered.
That experience helped him at USMMA where he was a two-time All-American, a three-time conference champion, and won the NCAA Div. III championship at 165 pounds his junior year despite dislocating a finger during the title match. “The intensity and physicality of college wrestling was at a much higher level than what I saw in high school. Every match I wrestled in college, I had to get on the mat and work.”
Renault, 34, will be officially inducted into the USMMA Hall of Fame on Sept. 16. He works as a financial planner in Cape Cod and lives in Plymouth with his wife Ryann. They have two young boys: Vincent and Dawson.
More:‘Once you’ve wrestled, everything else is easy’
“They’re both already obsessed with wrestling,” Renault said about his son’s passion for the sport. “I won’t push them towards getting into wrestling, but if they want to do it, I won’t stop them.”
Email the reporter at dwolcott@wickedlocal.com and you can follow him on Twitter, @DavidWolcott1.