PATCHED UP AND READY TO GO: DISHING OUT AND TAKING PAIN DECORATED ROYAL WRESTLER DUNN RETURNS FROM INJURIES.

Byline: Dave Shelburne Staff Writer

He's the top wrestler on the best team in the area's strongest league, but like most in his sport, junior Kevin Dunn of No.1-ranked Royal High of Simi Valley has had to pay the price for success.

This season and last, the price has involved painfully more than the hard practice that is the bottom line to winning in wrestling.

Dunn started this, his third, season at Royal with a letterman's jacket as patch-adorned as a NASCAR racer. Two individual Marmonte League titles and as many league MVP weight-class awards, two medals in the Southern Section final, advancement to two Masters Meets and membership on the section's 2005 Div. V dual-meet championship team helped stress the threads.

Dunn as easily could include a pair of Red Cross logos on that jacket - one for the season-ending knee injury he suffered in the Masters in February, another for one in the Reno Tournament of Champions last month.

The latter, coming in the quarterfinals of one of the nation's toughest high school tournaments, resulted in an injury default in the fifth-place final, dropping Dunn to 16-1 for the season, 102-15 for his prep career and knocking the blond-haired 119-pounder out of practice and competition for the second time in 10 months.

The good news for Royal wrestling fans is the latest setback wasn't a re-injury to the knee, or season-threatening.

``It was my left shoulder,'' said Dunn, whose 2004-05 season was ended by a knee injury in the Masters quarterfinals. This time, he could draw satisfaction from not just another medalist performance in a top tournament, but the fact this injury wasn't as serious.

``I knew it wasn't too bad,'' he said. ``It was just, `Don't hurt it more than it was.' ''

Dunn's calm reaction typifies what might be his biggest asset in his chosen sport - whether demonstrated by the physical skill to reverse misfortune on the mat or the mind-set to turn adversity into motivation.

``He finds a way to make a bad situation a good situation,'' Thousand Oaks coach Kerry Lyne said. ``If he's in trouble, he finds a way to get out of trouble.''

The only way out of trouble last February - after Dunn injured the medial collateral ligament in his right knee one victory shy of state qualification - was eight weeks in a knee brace, followed by months of knee- strengthening exercise.

``I heard it and I felt it,'' he said of the Masters Meet injury.

A week before the Reno tournament, which included three preseason top-10 California wrestlers among the top five finishers in his 119-pound weight class, Dunn opened Marmonte League play with his fifth first-period pin in as many matches and proclaimed his knee fully recovered.

``For a while, I didn't know if it ever was going to get back to 100 percent,'' he said after his Highlanders' victory at Thousand Oaks. ``But now, it feels good - perfect.''

Dunn started this season with four consecutive pins in winning MVP honors at the Newbury Park Invitational, where the Highlanders won by 37 points with a 230 total. He placed third in the Edison tournament, running his season-opening pin streak to six and adding a pair of technical falls before a semifinal loss to eventual runner-up Brandon Roell of Laguna Hills.

The Royal junior expects to return to practice this week and be back in the Highlanders' lineup for two big events next week, starting with the Jan. 10 nonleague home showdown with Ventura, Royal's county rival. Then comes the Jan. 13-14 Five Counties Tournament at Fountain Valley High, annually one of the state's best high school wrestling events.

First-year Royal coach Richard Carrillo, who has worked with multiple State Meet qualifiers as head coach of Chatsworth's 2004 City Section- championship team and as an assistant to Paul Mole on last season's Southern Section Div. V-titlist Royal team, calls Dunn ``definitely one of the best wrestlers I've ever coached.''

Like fellow Marmonte coach Lyne of Thousand Oaks, Carrillo admires the way Dunn turns work ethic into increasingly stronger wrestling abilities while moving up in weight class each season - going 38-8 at 103 pounds as a freshman, than 48-6 at 112 as a sophomore.

``His skills just keep getting better and better,'' Carrillo said. ``He just keeps adding more and more weapons to his arsenal. Last year was about near-falls - scoring a lot of near-falls. This year, he's all about trying to pin people. He really wants to get those pins. That's where he's improved the most.''

Dave Shelburne, [phone]

dave.shelburne(at)dailynews.com

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Royal's Kevin Dunn, top, has battled wrestlers such as Thousand Oaks' Bret Bassett, and injuries.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer