Every March, I tune in to the NCAA Division I Men’s Wrestling Championships, a ritual I associate with the arrival of spring. It also reminds me of my own athletic tenure. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and started wrestling when I was five, and went on to compete at the Division I level in college.
This year’s championships were compulsive viewing. Penn State’s Carter Starocci became the first five-time D-I national champion, and Oklahoma State’s Wyatt Hendrickson stunned Olympic champion, Gable Steveson, in the heavyweight final. Oh. And Donald Trump was there. Joining him were Elon Musk, former wrestler turned Republican Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, and other political allies.
Trump made his entrance in Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center to cheers and “U-S-A, U-S-A” chants. He appeared after Starocci had just claimed his historic fifth title, prompting ESPN to interrupt Starocci’s interview and cut to the president. As Trump waved to the crowd, I received a text from a former training partner – “Dude, WTF” he wrote. I knew what he meant. I felt the same sinking disappointment.
Our sentiments, however, were not shared by many of the wrestlers at the tournament. Throughout the night, athletes shook hands with the president, posed with him for pictures and let him hold their NCAA trophies, obelisk-like totems that represent years of bloody sacrifice the uninitiated would be hard-pressed to fathom. On his X account, Tom Ryan, head coach at Ohio State, posted a picture of himself and Elon Musk, whom he called one of his “favorite men”. Hendrickson celebrated his victory by firing a stout salute in Trump’s direction and draping an American flag over his massive shoulders.
Two days after the tournament, Starocci joined Fox & Friends, and, despite his name being mispronounced multiple times, seemed happy to be there. Hendrickson appeared via video chat on America’s Newsroom, where Fox anchor Bill Hemmer, like many others, called him “Captain America”. Both interviews focused on wrestling and Trump in equal measure.
What do these athletes see in Trump? He is a wrestler’s opposite in nearly every way. Though he has a weird habit of trying to dominate handshakes, he’s never been a serious athlete, despite his boasts. His privilege has shielded him from accountability throughout his life. Among high-level wrestlers, personal accountability is a deep, almost spiritual core value. Most wrestlers never reach their athletic goals, regardless of how hard they work. I can attest that such failures are crushing. And yet, when it comes to losses, most wrestlers reject any form of excuse. Two years ago, in a bout considered one of the all-time college upsets, Matt Ramos of Purdue pinned Iowa superstar, Spencer Lee. Lee, who was injured, said in a Barstoolinterview, “I saw people say I lost because I was hurt … That’s not true. I got beat. I hate when people try to make excuses for me when I got outwrestled and beat.” Trump has yet to publicly concede his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
This paradox is not surprising. Many of Trump’s fans voted for policies that will not benefit their lives. Their support is based on emotion, not logic. Viewed through this lens, college wrestling’s embrace of Trump makes sense. Trump’s antagonistic relationship with higher ed matters little when, to wrestling, he and his allies say, “We love you, we’re proud of you.”
For a sport routinely shoved to the margins, this high-profile support is significant. Penn State’s Mitchell Mesenbrink said if “you put politics aside, no matter if you’re conservative or liberal … to have the president of the United States be at something we want to get people to watch … [is] really, really cool.” Wasted tax dollars notwithstanding, Mesenbrink is right. You seldom see wrestlers in a montage on Gatorade commercials. You don’t hear about them inking huge corporate sponsorship deals. Simone Biles, Caitlin Clark and Michael Phelps are household names, yet a relatively small sect outside the wrestling world knows who Jordan Burroughs is. In 2016, The New Yorker published The Faces of College Wrestlers, which featured portraits taken after wrestlers had stepped off the mat. I was delighted until I read the article’s comment section on Facebook. With articulate prose, people had reduced these young men to knuckle-dragging stereotypes. The phrase “toxic masculinity” appeared multiple times.
Negative attention is nothing new for wrestling. Fifty years ago, there were more than 150 D-I wrestling programs; as of 2025, there are 79. My alma mater, Boston University, cut its program in 2014 to make space for men’s lacrosse. To me, an elite urban school rejecting wrestling for a sport associated with affluence felt like a rejection of my home state, and, more broadly, of rural America.
View image in fullscreen
Herein lies the other thread that tethers wrestling to Trump: while wrestling programs of all levels exist in various parts of the country, wrestling is largely associated with rural America. The urban-rural divide has continued to widen since Trump first entered the political arena. Many rural voters have voiced feelings of being unseen – or, if seen, of being scorned – by the political elite. Trump’s policies do not improve life for most of his rural constituents – quite the opposite. Nonetheless, to these voters, Trump routinely says, I see you.
Democrats have struggled to find a language that engages rural America (a trend Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are trying to change). Similarly, many on the left have faltered when it comes to locating a productive language to discuss masculinity. Trump fills that void, hollow as his platitudes may be.
It took me three application cycles to gain admission to a fully funded MFA program. As rejections rolled in, I leaned on the persistence wrestling had instilled in me. My eventual acceptance letter filled me with as much joy as any win on the mat ever had. My first night on campus, an MFA colleague, referring to my identity as a straight white male, asked, “How does it feel to be part of the problem?” The question portended a number of similar experiences. Phrases like “toxic masculinity” and “lit bro” were swung in my direction like a judge banging a gavel. In those moments, I wanted to turn translucent – to hold out my arms like a Da Vinci sketch and show the scar tissue and nerve damage and old surgeries and say, see?
In a guest essay for the New York Times, David J Morris laments the dearth of young men involved in the reading and writing of literature. He notes that this reality is reflected in our national politics. “Young men who still exhibit curiosity about the world,” he writes, “Too often seek intellectual stimulation through figures of the ‘manosphere’ such as Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan.”
Morris points out a number of discouraging trends. Suicide rates among young men have skyrocketed while educational statistics continue to plummet. Young men who exhibit “traditional” masculine qualities, such as physical strength and self-reliance, are labeled “toxic” by a culture that will just as quickly make male vulnerability the punchline of a joke. Last year, a study conducted at Dublin City University by Dr Catherine Baker, professor Debbie Ging, and Dr Maja Brandt Andreasen uncovered the alarming extent to which algorithms used by social media platforms recommend misogynistic content to young men. A 2023 study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that young men are reaching financial milestones at a slower rate than men of previous generations, while numbers among women swing in the opposite direction.
Leading up to the election, Trump took pains to forge an associative link between young men’s economic woes and progressive politics; his racist and misogynistic attacks on Kamala Harris fed into a prevailing sense of anger and dissatisfaction. The irony, of course, is that Trump has a long history of relying on immigrant labor and stiffing the working class. On 13 July 2024, the attempt on Trump’s life at a rally in Pennsylvania further solidified his tough-guy image. AP photographer Evan Vucci captured a photo of Trump pumping his fist like a victorious athlete as blood dripped from his ear. (Celebrations of Trump’s temerity tended to ignore the fact that audience member Corey Comperatore was killed.) The president also has a strong relationship with the UFC. Last Saturday, he attended UFC 314 in Miami. For fight fans, chaos-inducing trade policies are trivial when Trump – like a Roman emperor at the Colosseum – sits among the people for a dose of cathartic violence. Is it thus surprising that Trump made significant gains among young men of all backgrounds in last year’s presidential election?
Wrestling is hard, and those who excel at it deserve to be celebrated. It teaches young people how to hold themselves accountable and persevere through difficult challenges – skills that seem to be in short supply. Boys are not the lone beneficiaries. Girls’ wrestling is America’s fastest growing high school sport. While many figures of the “manosphere” champion physical fitness, the wholesale conflation of fitness and toxic masculinity is a mistake. Wrestling, like any sport, has its bad actors. Still, no one benefits when those who promote inclusiveness take it upon themselves to define masculinity with narrow parameters that shame a large number of young men. Shame drives these young men toward the praise of a hypocritical false idol, and, worse, toward “manosphere” extremism.
Perhaps the wrestling world’s embrace of Trump is a metonym for our historical moment. How to positively reengage young men is the question with which America must grapple if it is going to wrest democracy from the jaws of defeat. The whistle has already been blown; the match is underway.
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. – The St. Olaf College women’s track and field team turned in 13 performances that ranked on its all-time performers’ list at the season-opening M City Classic on Friday at the University of Minnesota Fieldhouse.
First years accounted for 11 of the 13 performances that ranked on St. Olaf’s all-time list at the unscored meet, which included teams from the NCAA Division I, NCAA Division II, NCAA Division III, National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), and club levels. In addition to the top-10 list performances, senior Ella Landis posted St. Olaf’s lone first-place finish at the meet by winning the one-mile run in 5:17.28.
In her first collegiate meet, first year Evangeline Sappington broke onto the program’s all-time performers’ list in both the 60-meter dash and 200-meter dash. Sappington was the top Division III finisher and was 10th overall in the 200-meter dash (26.84), while also taking second among Division III competitors and 16th overall in the 60-meter dash. Sappington’s time in the 60-meter dash ranks second on the Oles’ all-time list – just four one-hundredths of a second off the record – and her time in the 200-meter dash is fifth.
Sophomore Izzi Jaeckle clocked in with St. Olaf’s No. 4 time in the 60-meter dash by placing 17th (8.10), while first year Ellie Semple also broke onto the list in 10th with a time of 8.28 seconds to finish 27th. Sophomore Logan Paulsen moved up to seventh on the Oles’ list with a sixth-place performance in the shot put (12.48m, 40′ 11 ½”), while first year Abigal Frei cleared 3.26 meters (10′ 8 ¼”) for a No. 5 all-time result and an eighth-place finish.
First years Svea Frantzich and Claire Stein recorded St. Olaf’s No. 8 and No. 10 scores in the pentathlon by finishing seventh (3,005) and eighth (2,993), respectively. Frantzich tied for third in the long jump (5.44m, 17′ 10 ¼”) and was sixth in the 60-meter hurdles (9.47), which both ranked on St. Olaf’s all-time list. Stein also tied for third in the long jump (5.44m, 10′ 10 ¼”) to highlight her day. First year Annika Walsh was the runner-up in the high jump (1.62m, 5′ 3 ¾”) – fifth all-time – and was seventh in the 60-meter hurdles (9.48) – ninth all-time – as part of a ninth-place finish in the pentathlon (2,881).
St. Olaf will be back in action in 2026 at the Ole Opener at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 17 at Tostrud Center.
At the 2025 JM Eagle LA Championship, IRCODE debuted Player Profiles, a new LIVE+ capability to bring fans closer to athletes without prompts, QR codes, or static triggers.
In addition to offering an on-site fan experience, IRCODE, as a Technology Partner, introduced an interactive viewer experience for fans at home. When players appeared on-screen, viewers used the IRCODE app to scan their screen and instantly accessed a full, interactive profile for shopping their favorite players’ gear, diving deeper into their stories and learning more about the causes that are meaningful to them.
Player Profiles leverages IRCODE’s patented EXACT Match technology and proprietary computer vision, and applies real-time visual recognition to usher in the next generation of second-screen entertainment.
BEREA, Ohio – Fans can follow or watch Saturday’s Baldwin Wallace University basketball and indoor track and field action via live results, statistics or video.
The men’s and women’s indoor track and field teams open the 2025-26 season when it travels to Cleveland to compete in the Spartan Alumni Holiday Classic hosted by Case Western Reserve University inside the Veale Convocation, Recreation and Athletic Center at 11:00 a.m.
Live Results:
https://bwyellowjackets.cc/3MlDQcr
FloCollege On Demand Live Video:
https://bwyellowjackets.cc/3KFq6st
The men’s basketball team travels to New Concord for the first game of a men’s and women’s Ohio Athletic Conference and Hoops for Hunger Food Drive doubleheader against Muskingum University on Performance Court inside the Anne C. Steele Center at 1:00 p.m. Fans can receive free admission to the game with a donation of canned food, a non-perishable item, or a monetary contribution.
Tickets:
https://bwyellowjackets.cc/3WGuwll
Live Statistics:
https://bwyellowjackets.cc/493Gehq
FloCollege On Demand Live Video:
https://flosports.link/47hSw2V
The No. 21 nationally ranked women’s basketball team travels to New Concord for the second game of a women’s and men’s Ohio Athletic Conference and Hoops for Hunger Food Drive doubleheader against Muskingum University on Performance Court inside the Anne C. Steele Center at 4:00 p.m. Fans can receive free admission to the game with a donation of canned food, a non-perishable item, or a monetary contribution.
Here’s everything you need to know leading up to the first round of the 2025 DII women’s volleyball championship.
The championship bracket was revealed during a selection show on Monday, Nov. 24, live streamed here on NCAA.com. Twenty-three teams earned automatic qualification, with the remaining 41 teams selected at-large by the Division II Women’s Volleyball Committee. Teams from each of the eight regional sites received initial seeds Nos. 1-8.
The DI women’s volleyball championship is here. The full reveal of the 64-team bracket was announced on Sunday, Nov. 30. Here is everything you need to know about the 2025 women’s volleyball tournament.
LOS ANGELES — After months of preparation, Cal Poly’s historic Friday night culminated in a stunning five-set upset of fourth-seeded USC (25-19, 25-20, 20-25, 14-25, 15-7), shattering every perfect bracket along the way.
The unseeded Mustangs (27-7) not only advanced to the NCAA Round of 16 for the first time since 2007, the seventh such appearance in program history, but also became the only team in the bracket to defeat two seeded opponents ranked lower than No. 6. Cal Poly’s last deep runs came in 2007, 1989, ‘87, ‘85, ‘84, and ‘82.
In a departure from their typical all-court offense, the Mustangs leaned on their pin hitters to secure a second straight ranked victory. Leading the charge was Emma Fredrick, who delivered a statement double-double with match-highs of 17 kills and 17 digs. Kendall Beshear and Annabelle Thalken followed with 12 kills apiece, with Beshear adding a pair of aces.
Freshman middle Charlotte Kelly anchored the net with a career-high seven block assists, part of a 10-block team effort that quieted USC’s top-50 offense to a .237 hitting percentage. Beshear (14 digs) and setter Emme Bullis (44 assists, 12 digs) also recorded double-doubles, helping limit USC’s top hitters, Leah Ford and London Wijay, to 19 kills on 55 swings.
Cal Poly stormed through the opening set behind relentless blocking, forcing an early USC timeout at 11-6. Despite a late Trojan push to narrow the gap to 22-18, a Caroline Walters timeout steadied the Mustangs, who closed out the frame 25-19.
USC responded by edging ahead 15-13 at the second-set media timeout. But after 13 ties and five lead changes, Cal Poly surged late with a 21-18 advantage and never looked back, taking the set 25-20.
The Women of Troy rallied in the third, building their largest lead at 17-12 and holding on to win 25-20. Momentum carried into the fourth, where USC raced ahead to claim it 25-14 and force a deciding fifth set.
In the tiebreaker, Cal Poly’s second of the tournament, the Mustangs broke a 3-3 deadlock with a commanding 12-4 run, sealing the match and their spot in the Third Round.
Now, one of the finest teams in program history, and a standout in recent mid-major volleyball, travels to Lexington to face No. 1 seed and regional host Kentucky.
The NCAA will announce date and time details Saturday evening. Until then, San Luis Obispo’s humble Mustangs have plenty to celebrate.
Penn State was in the Lone Star State on Friday, taking on South Florida in the first round of the NCAA tournament. The teams met in Austin at the Gregory Gymnasium, home of the Texas Longhorns women’s volleyball team.
This wasn’t the first time the Nittany Lions and the Bulls have met; however, it was their first time in tournament play, but the blue and white have a 3-0 record over USF.
Penn State took out the Bulls 3-1 after a tight match with challenges and back-and-forth play to thank for that.
Middle blocker Maggie Mendelson opened up the scoring for the Nittany Lions, and right-side hitter Kennedy Martin went up over the net to make it two.
Outside hitter Maria Clara Andrade got the Bulls their first point of the night and USF’s first point in NCAA tournament play since its last appearance in 2003.
USF kept good coverage in the first set to keep the Nittany Lions at a distance, as well as landing kill after kill, which put it ahead of the Nittany Lions 15-10 halfway through the first set.
The blue and white came back with a crucial ace by libero Gillian Grimes, and Martin sent kills through USF’s defense, which tied the Nittany Lions 16-16. Setter Addie Lyon backed up Grimes and made good digs that kept the ball in play, which allowed the Nittany Lions to get to set point and take the first set 25-23.
Andrade kept the Nittany Lions on their toes, and she was there to give the blue and white a back-and-forth first set.
The second set started off strong for USF with outside hitter Addy Brus adding two kills to the Bulls’ score, both landing in the center of the Nittany Lions’ side of the court. Middle blocker Iyanna Garvin continued to get up over the net, as well, and Laila Ivey delivered a housed block, which shut down Penn State and kept a lead.
A crucial point that would close the gap between USF and Penn State was called a service error on Brus, but after it was challenged by the Bulls, the point was given to them as an ace. This put USF 15-10 halfway through the second set.
The Bulls reached set point 24-12 and took the second set 25-12.
The third set saw the blue and white take control by capitalizing on USF’s errors, getting it ahead of the Bulls. Outside hitter Caroline Jurevicius had a strong kill that gave the Nittany Lions some wiggle room, but that was closed by Ivey with a kill of her own.
Lyon kept racking up assists and setting up her offense for multiple kills to keep up with USF, which led halfway through the third set 16-14.
The Nittany Lions tied with the Bulls, 18-18, after an attack error by Brus. The point was challenged by USF, but the call remained the same after further review.
Penn State reached set point after the point was challenged by USF. Penn State took the third set 25-21.
Penn State continued its string of errors early in the fourth set, which the Bulls used to get a lead early on. Outside hitter Emmi Sellman delivered an important ace that closed a previously narrow gap between the Nittany Lions and the Bulls, and a kill by Jurevicius as well as an attack error by Andrade, tied the teams 10-10.
Penn State advanced to match point after it pulled away late in the fourth set, and took the fourth set 25-19, winning the match and moving on in the NCAA tournament.
Up next
Penn State will face the winner of No. 1-seed Texas and Florida A&M at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in Austin, Texas.
MORE VOLLEYBALL COVERAGE
No. 25 Penn State closed their regular season with a 3-1 win on the road, against Iowa last …
If you’re interested in submitting a Letter to the Editor, click here.
