Cael Sanderson Position: Head Coach Experience: 1st Season

On April 17, 2009, Penn State Director of Athletics Tim Curley signalled a paradigm shift in the landscape of collegiate athletics with a stunning announcement. He sent tremors of shocking proportions through the wrestling world and he set the Penn State wrestling program on a course that many around the country feel could shift the powerbase of wrestling in the United States eastward.

Curley named national wrestling legend Cael Sanderson as Penn State's 12th head wrestling coach on that day and immediately, the nation looked East. As Sanderson left his alma mater of Iowa State and moved himself, his staff and three families to Happy Valley, the nation's high school wrestlers took notice and a roomful of already dedicated Nittany Lion grapplers smiled, cheered and geared up for a new direction in Penn State wrestling.

The 29-year old Sanderson comes to Penn State after three extremely successful years as the head coach at his alma mater. Sanderson's teams did not finish any lower than fifth at the NCAA Championships and never had a wrestler not qualify for nationals, getting 30 of 30 grapplers through to the championship tournament.

In 2007, Sanderson's rookie campaign, he led ISU to a 13-3 dual meet record and the first of three straight Big 12 Championships. An NCAA Runner-Up finish in Detroit capped off a wildly successful year as the Cyclones crowned one national champion and Sanderson was honored as Big 12 Coach of the Year, National Rookie Coach of the Year and National Coach of the Year. The next year, Sanderson led ISU to a 16-4 dual meet mark, another Big 12 title and a fifth place finish at nationals. Iowa State's seven All-Americans in 2008 were the most at the school since 1993.

This past season, Sanderson's team went 15-3 in duals, won its third straight Big 12 title and took third place at the NCAA Championships in St. Louis (just 12 points out of first place). The Cyclones also crowned another national champion. In three years, Sanderson's teams went 44-10, won three conference crowns, qualified all 30 wrestlers for nationals, and earned 15 All-America awards and two individual national titles.

As a wrestler, Sanderson established himself as the most dominant collegiate competitor in NCAA history. In four years, Sanderson never lost. From 1999-2002, Sanderson posted a 159-0 career record (going 39-0, 40-0, 40-0 and 40-0); won four individual National Championships; won four Most Outstanding Wrestler awards at the NCAA Championships (the only wrestler in NCAA history to do so); became the first freshman in NCAA history to win the O.W. honor and won three Dan Hodge Trophies as the nation's best collegiate wrestler (also a collegiate first). He wrestled his first three years at 184 and then moved to 197 as a senior. The four-time All-American's four-year streak of perfection was called the No. 2 most outstanding achievement in collegiate sports history by Sports Illustrated and the NCAA called his final win (in the 2002 NCAA 197-pound championship) one of the NCAA's "25 Defining Moments" for its Centennial celebration. His wrestling career culminated in 2004 when the Heber City, Utah, native won the 84 kg Olympic Gold Medal in Athens, Greece. After graduating in 2002, he spent 2003 and 2004 as a special assistant in the athletic department at Iowa State before joining the ISU coaching staff as an assistant coach in 2004-05. He was promoted to the assistant head coach position the next year and then became the Cyclones' head coach for the 2006-07 season.

THE NEW LION KING...
By Steve Sampsell

It sounds like a riddle, really: Name the man who loves to climb mountains and has selected a place known as Happy Valley to reach what he considers the highest possible peak in his sport. Wrestling legend Cael Sanderson smiles a bit when he ponders the seeming contrast, and he smiles even broader when he thinks about the possibilities that were created when he took over the Penn State wrestling program.

Sanderson--who claimed four NCAA championships and compiled a 159-0 record at Iowa State from 1999 to 2002 before adding an Olympic gold medal to his stellar resume in 2004--was introduced as Penn State's 12th wrestling coach on April 20, 2009.

In three seasons as head coach at his alma mater before coming to Penn State, Sanderson's teams compiled a 44-10 dual meet record and finished second, fifth and third in the final standings at the NCAA Championships. Also, every wrestler on those teams each year qualified for the national tournament. Despite all that success, and his status as one of the most respected and well-known amateur wrestlers of all time, Sanderson, 30, believes he has unfinished business with the sport. He wants more, something he considers as the pinnacle of his career and profession.

"The goal is always a national championship," Sanderson says. "Even with my championships and the Olympics, my goal is a team national championship. I think we can do that here. And it's not going to take very long."

Penn State's strong wrestling tradition and the powerhouse high school programs in the state (as well as those of neighboring states such as New Jersey, Ohio and New York) played a big role in Sanderson's move to the Nittany Lions. He believes the nearby areas with rich high school talent and the program's own national reputation provide a recipe for even greater success in the future. He also believes the program's second national championship, it's first since 1953, can be achieved sooner rather than later.

At the same time, Sanderson plans to reach that pinnacle on his own terms. That means a roster full of student-athletes who are both academically gifted and athletically talented. That also means young men who value hard work and who work hard at their own personal values.

For the square-jawed Sanderson, that no-shortcut, train-hard approach has been his personal route to success and he believes in it completely. A two-time NWCA Academic All-American as a student-athlete himself, Sanderson wants members of his Penn State team who "live the lifestyle" and "love to train."

He does not believe hard work trumps talent on all occasions, but he built his own ultra-successful career--during which he won the Dan Hodge Trophy as the nation's top collegiate wrestler an amazing three times (no other wrestler has won it more than once)--by regularly executing what some opponents knew what was coming with perfection.

In Sanderson's case, that was often an ankle pick, and in some ways that's a perfect example of hard work and serious preparation leading to unmatched success. He believes that's a process others can repeat, if they want. So, he plans to stock the program with student-athletes as driven as him. Or at least driven enough to get his attention and earn a spot on the roster.

"If a kid's goal is to be a four-year starter, that's nice, but that's not really the goal we want," Sanderson says. "We want guys who want to be national champions."

Sanderson's family plays a big role in his day-to-day work with the program. Wife Kelly and son Tate provide part of his motivation and support system while brother Cody serves as associate head coach and brother Cyler joined the team's roster after transferring from Iowa State. The brothers grew up in Heber City, Utah, wrestling for their father Steve at Wasatch High School. Cael won four state championships, compiling a 127-3 record.

Still, it's not the unmatched wrestling resume alone that sets the likely stage for Sanderson's continued success as a coach, and for his success at Penn State. The secret to his success is really no secret at all. It's something anyone who gets to meet him quickly understands.

Cael Sanderson, an honest, modest man who enjoys hard work, boasts a caring, down-to-earth personality that matches all the accolades and awards he earned as a wrestler. He's the first collegiate wrestler to go undefeated with more than 100 victories, but he's just as likely to stop while walking down the street and pick up a piece of trash to throw it away as he is to dominate an opponent on the mat.

His career as a wrestler was ranked by "Sports Illustrated" as the second most impressive performance by a collegiate athlete ever (trailing only the four-gold medal-performance of Jesse Owens at the 1932 Olympic Games), but he's just as passionate about the preparation of one of his wrestlers as he is about spending a good day outdoors with his son.

So, for a man who has several ascents of 11,749-foot Mount Timpanogos in Utah to his credit, a man who has won every possible individual wrestling award, only that one mountain remains. He plans to start the ascent toward a team national championship this season in Happy Valley.