St. Charles East’s Ben Davino is a 3-time state champ and ranked No. 1 in the nation at 132 pounds

Epiphanies can come at the oddest times.

One that smacked Mark Davino square in the face came while watching his 5-year-old son, Ben, in a flag football game. Play after play, a bigger — and supposedly tougher — kid was pushing and shoving him all over the field.

At some point Ben decided he'd had enough and flattened his foe. Whistles screeched, flags flew and an astonished Mark looked up to quite the sight.

“I actually missed the play,” Mark said. “But we look on the field and basically the kid is laid out and Ben's standing over him. In my mind it was kind of like Muhammad Ali over Sonny Liston.

“So I turned to (wife) Jen and said, 'Hey, maybe he should try wrestling.'”

Major good call there.

Twelve years later, Ben is the No. 1-ranked wrestler in the country at 132 pounds and is less than a month away from possibly becoming the 15th four-time state champ in Illinois history. He's 168-1 in high school, the only loss coming as a sophomore to returning world medalist Marc-Anthony McGowan in the Ironman tournament finals in Ohio.

Ben then beat McGowan twice the next year.

“The only loss he's suffered during high school season, he's been able to avenge, which is kind of cool,” said Saints coach Jason Potter, who was the first two-time state champ at St. Charles High School, now St. Charles East, in 1998-99. “Ben's now shattered every record we have.”

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Stand in a hallway with Ben and one might think: How is this possible? He doesn't look at all intimidating. He's polite. Soft spoken, yet engaging. Has a good sense of humor.

But attend one match and everything crystallizes.

This kid is incredibly quick and insanely strong. Many opponents are shocked and struggling for their lives moments after the whistle blows.

“You can't study for one move for him,” said teammate and good friend Jayden Colon.

Yet, all of that's not even what makes Ben truly special. What separates the Ohio State recruit from so many is his “savant-like intelligence” — as his dad puts it — when it comes to the sport.

Potter found that out five years ago after making suggestions on how Ben might beat an opponent he'd lost to the year before. Seconds later, Ben chimed in and said, “Yeah, but I think I could also do this.”

“I was just taken aback that an eighth-grader was able to do that,” Potter said. “It was something I'd never seen before. …

“We teach them moves and how to get (ready). The deeper level of understanding of where weight shifts and that kind of stuff usually goes over kids' heads, but he was dialed right into it. He understood it all.”

It goes without saying that a competitive fire must run deep for anyone to achieve this level of success and that's certainly the case here. And we're not just talking about wrestling.

“You don't want to play Monopoly with Ben,” Mark said. “We've never finished a game in our house. It always goes horribly awry.”

Even something as simple as an iPhone game like QSWatermelon gets taken to another level.

“He doesn't want us to win,” sophomore Dom Munaretto said. “He has the high score right now and he's constantly playing.”

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Truly elite wrestlers have myriad options when deciding what high school to attend. Many will go the private route, and the cream of the crop go out of state.

But not Ben. He opted for St. Charles East for one simple reason — he inherently trusts Potter.

“Our minds just kind of clicked,” said Ben, who is 40-0 this season with 19 pins and 12 technical falls. “He's just super open to the way I wrestle and wants to see me develop the way I wrestle rather than the way he wrestles.”

St. Charles East is loaded with top talent, with Colon committing to Illinois, Tyler Guerra headed to Indiana and others like Brody Murray, Anthony Gutierrez and Munaretto mulling their collegiate futures.

The tutelage of Potter and his staff is one reason for the enormous growth shown by so many, but having a prodigy like Ben around for four years pays huge dividends as well.

“Oh my, God, yes,” said Guerra, who wrestles at 138 pounds and transferred from Montini after his freshman year. “I've felt massive improvements just from coming to East.

“Ben's tough to wrestle in the room. He gives me all sorts of looks and he's helped me train to beat some tough guys.”

Said Colon: “He comes to work hard and he brings it every day. He's not a kid that takes it easy in practice. He just goes and goes and goes.”

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Not many athletes ascend to these heights without a supportive family, and Mark has taken the wheel in that department — quite literally — by driving Ben to tournaments in Virginia, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina.

The car of choice was a 2011 Prius.

“It had 294,000 miles on it when I traded it in,” Mark said, “and only because it died on me.”

More miles will be added to the Davinos' vehicles when Ben wrestles in the state finals in Champaign in mid-February.

Next fall there will be drives all over Big Ten country following Ben. He is confident the journey will at some point end with Ohio State standing triumphantly over a dominant Penn State squad that has won 10 of the last 12 NCAA championships.

If that happens, it might just bring Mark and Jen back to that day on the football field when their little underdog of a 5-year-old — to borrow from Ali himself — floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.

“It will feel good to take out the best,” Ben said when asked why he chose Ohio State over Penn State. “So if I'm on an up-and-coming team — and a pretty young team — in a couple years it's gonna feel really good when we're winning that national title.

“That would feel a lot better than already being at the top and just keep hammering away.”