Penn State wrestling show: Roman Bravo-Young leaves NLWC for Oklahoma State RTC and more
The Penn State wrestling show from Blue-White Illustrated is back with a late August update on the Nittany Lions. Past and present members of head coach Cael Sanderson’s team have put Paris and the Olympics behind them and are now focused on the 2024-2025 season. We get to that in this week’s episode, but that’s not where the conversation begins for host Thomas Frank Carr and reporter Greg Pickel.
Instead, the show starts with the news of the week: Multi-time NCAA champ Roman Bravo-Young is leaving the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club. His next destination is not an unexpected one. After competing for Team Mexico at the Olympics, where he went 0-1 at 57 kilograms, ‘RBY’ is moving on to join David Taylor in Stillwater as a member of the Cowboy Regional Training Center. Pickel explains why the move makes sense, what it means for Penn State, and what it means for Oklahoma State. The long and short of it is that, while the Nittany Lions lose a lightweight training partner and Olympic-level competitor, they’ll be A-OK, and for the Cowboys, it’s a solid splash that will further both their RTC and program moving forward.
“The move bolsters the strength of the Cowboy RTC and the Oklahoma State light weight environment. Bravo-Young, a 2x NCAA champion and 3x finalist, joins World silver medalist and 4x NCAA finalist Daton Fix and Oklahoma State assistant coach Thomas Gilman, a World champion and 4x World/Olympic medalist,” David Bray writes for FLO Wrestling.
“Bravo-Young is already familiar with both Gilman and Fix, having trained with Gilman for years at the NLWC and having competed against Fix twice in the NCAA finals.”
You can watch this week’s Penn State wrestling show in the video player above and also on YouTube. Or, you can listen at your favorite destinations for audio like SPOTIFY and APPLE.
From there, the duo moved on to some final thoughts from the Olympics. Aaron Brooks finished third, but the U.S. men’s freestyle team did not leave the summer games with a gold medal for the first time since the 1960s. Is it time to panic? Pickel says no and explains why in this week’s episode.
The show closes with some final thoughts on what lies ahead for the Penn State wrestling team. Schedule news will be coming out in the days and weeks ahead as the season starts to appear on the horizon.
