Chad Dubin walked out of weigh-ins before the EWL Tournament and heard a voice behind him.

"I was just in the neighborhood and heard you had a match," it said.

Dubin did a double take -- the voice belonged to his dad, who should have been home in Florida.

Beth and Steve Dubin had never seen their son wrestle in Rec Hall in his five years on the Penn State wrestling team, so they surprised him last weekend by flying to State College for the EWL Tournament.

"It put a little extra pressure on me," Dubin said. "I would have felt really bad if I'd lost in the first round."

Dubin placed third in the tournament and qualified for the NCAA Tournament -- which was a good thing because his parents already had plane tickets for nationals.

"We just knew he was going to qualify," Beth Dubin said.

Dubin knew, too.

"I'm not on cloud nine or anything," he said after placing third. "I don't mean to sound cocky, but I knew I was going to qualify for nationals. It's just a given."

Dubin, a redshirt senior who walked onto the team five years ago, lost only one match, a 9-5 decision to Clarion's John Dasta in the semifinals. He scored a takedown in the final 30 seconds to tie the score, 5-5, and then needed to erase 11 seconds of Dasta's riding time to preserve the tie and send the match into overtime.

Dubin did so, but was reversed with seconds remaining and lost the match. He grabbed his warmups, crawled under the bleachers, and buried his face in his hands.

"I was just hanging on and hoping he didn't do anything instead of keeping the pressure on so he couldn't do anything," Dubin said.

The next morning, Dubin came back to defeat Alex Turner of Cleveland State, 13-2, and qualify for nationals and the semifinals.

This time, his mother cried.

"I just knew he was going to do it," she said, hugging Dubin's teammates, Dubin's teammates' girlfriends, and wrestling booster club members.

Beth and Steve Dubin said they enjoyed watching their son wrestle, but most of all they enjoyed meeting the people who had "taken their place" during the last five years.

"It's just great to see so many people have adopted him as a mascot or underdog," Steve Dubin said.

"He's never been the greatest wrestler, but he's just worked so hard," Beth Dubin said. "It's wonderful to see that so many people care about your kid, even when he's 1,700 miles away."