Penn State Wrestling Fans!!!!!!!!!!!!
We are back in school and are a week into official NCAA practices for the 2025-26 season. With 2 of the 3 World Championships that our guys competed in this off season complete, we just have one more to go. Once this competition is finished that will be a conclusion to our 2024-25 season and then the focus turns to the 2025-26 college season again. Of those 2 World Championship so far, which were the U20 and Senior World Championship, we have been awarded 7 medals out of the possible 8 we could have earned. We will have a chance to earn 7 more medals in about 10 days at the U23 World Championships.
First up was the Under 20 World Championships where we had 5 guys compete with 2 guys earning Gold medals, 1 guy earning Silver, and 2 guys earning Bronze medals. The U20 team won the team title and broke the record for most champions ever. Earning Gold for Penn State were incoming freshmen Marcus Blaze and PJ Duke. Silver medalist was incoming freshmen Will Henckel and Bronze medalists were brothers Connor and Cole Mirasola. It was a great performance by the USA team and in particular our young guys that will be a big part of Penn State wrestling over the next 4-5 years.
About 3 weeks after the U20 World Championship was the Senior World Championship where we had 3 guys competing. Kyle Snyder won another Gold Medal to add to his collection beating 2 guys that had beaten him within the last year to win the title. Levi Haines, who still has another year of college wrestling to go, won a silver medal defeating a World Champion along the way in his first Senior World Championship. PJ Duke, who is a true freshman for us, lost to the returning World Champion in a great match and when his opponent lost in the semi finals he was eliminated. In international wrestling if you lose and your opponent does not make the finals you are eliminated. PJ wrestled a great tournament and continues to impress.
Up next is the U23 World Championship that start next week in Serbia. We will have Mitchell Mesenbrink and Josh Barr competing on October 24th and 25th, Luke Lilledahl, PJ Duke, and Levi Haines competing on the 25th and 26th, and have Marcus Blaze and Rocco Welsh competing on the 26th and 27th. It is very cool that we will have 7 Penn State guys representing the United States at the World Championship in this event. This is an exciting group of wrestlers, so we are looking forward to watching them scrap next week.
Our schedule has been released, and we are now officially 1 month away from our first dual of the 2026 season as well. We have a tough Oklahoma team coming into the Bryce Jordan Center for our first match of the year and will have 2 more matches in the Bryce Jordan Center this year as well. Having more matches at the BJC allows more of our fans an opportunity to see our guys compete as it is very hard to get tickets to Rec Hall (which is awesome by the way) for a lot of people. After this first dual, the Black Knight Invitational is another opportunity to watch the guys compete along with some of our young guys as we can take more than just our starters to this event. It is going to be an exciting year, and we look forward to the progress our guys make throughout the season.
We have a group of very committed guys that just continue to work and evolve because they love it. We are very excited about the group that will be representing Penn State this year and their commitment to being great. There are many factors that go into having a successful season, but these guys have set themselves up to have a great year. Thank you for all your support and lets have some fun.
GO LIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!
