What happened to Ben Askren? Former UFC fighter provides emotional health update
Former U.S. Olympic wrestler and UFC fighter Ben Askren shared an emotional update Wednesday, for the first time since undergoing double lung transplant surgery.
Askren developed pneumonia, followed by a staph infection, and has been hospitalized in Wisconsin.
He said in an Instagram video that he remembers very little of what happened between May 28 and July 2. Askren said he was brought up to speed on everything the family had experienced after reading a journal kept by his wife, Amy. “No recollection, zero idea, no idea what happened,” Askren said in the video. “We’ll kind of go through it all. I just read through my wife’s journal. It’s like a movie. It’s ridiculous. I only died four times, where the ticker stopped for about 20 seconds.”
Askren said he had also lost 50 pounds in 45 days. He currently weighs 147 and has started to regain his strength. He also thanked everyone for all the support.
“The thing that was most impeccable to me was all the love I felt from everybody,” Askren said. “It was almost like I got to have my own funeral. … The outpouring of love from the wrestling community was just amazing. It felt so good.” … more at … https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ufc/2025/07/09/ben-askren-health-update-lung-transplant/84527339007/
Felicity Taylor goes from ‘the only girl in the room’ to leading a wrestling room full of girls
NORTH LIBERTY, Iowa (KCRG) – Felicity Taylor starred at Iowa, winning a national championship in 2024, and gaining plenty of fans in her home state. One of them is 11-year-old Kona Hughes. “She was my favorite wrestler (at Iowa) so I was like ‘oh I wanna be like her when I grow up,’” said Kona. “My dad told me ‘Felicity’s gonna come to Big Game,’ and I was like – what? I was really excited!”
Taylor competes on the senior level and teaches at Big Game Wrestling Club in North Liberty, leading a camp on Friday and Saturday. “It’s amazing to give them the opportunities to wrestle with other girls, and then also high level girls,” Taylor said. “It’s amazing the see the girls at this level already catching on to things that took me so long to learn.”
Taylor won Final X and qualified for a spot on Team USA for the Senior World Championships. Taylor didn’t wrestle against any girls when she picked up the sport as a freshman at South Winneshiek high school. Now, she’s leading a group of about 20 girls and a couple boys. For Taylor, teaching is about more than the fundamentals. “Have fun,” she said. “That’s the biggest thing about these camps is making sure they have fun and love the sport.
“They are still young, so if they want to wrestle in college and even the level after that, they need to be loving the sport and having fun.” It’s clear Kona has learned that lesson. “(Felicity) is really fun, she’s a coach and she’s also like our friend. … more at … https://www.kcrg.com/2025/06/29/felicity-taylor-goes-only-girl-room-leading-wrestling-room-full-girls/
‘Kind of got hooked’: How sand wrestling made its way to the Muskingum Valley
Ancient style helps improve hand fighting, upper body attacks, wrestlers say
EAST FULTONHAM — Wyatt Abele is trying to introduce something different to the local wrestling community.
The former state placer from New Lexington, who now wrestles for Frostburg State in western Maryland, learned of sand wrestling through some former teammates with the 2019 Ohio All-Star team during a trip to Lake Tahoe. He immediately became intrigued. “I don’t remember who it was at the time, but it was just me and my teammates,” Abele said. “The coaches explained the rule set to us and were reffing our matches. We were just having fun with it.”
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Little did he know where it would take him. In October, he will compete in sand wrestling in Egypt.
In the meantime, he is passing his knowledge on to high schoolers during Monday sessions at Lake Isabella. They will be held weekly from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on the beach.
The first session was held on July 7 with four eager beavers led by New Lexington teammates Hunter Hinkle and Danny “D.J” Waite.
Abele did the teaching, introducing the rules — matches end after three points — while working mostly on hand fighting and upper body tactics. Points are awarded for takedowns, as well as by pushing an opponent out of bounds or taking them to their backs.
“You can end the match in the one move,” Abele noted. … more at … https://www.zanesvilletimesrecorder.com/story/sports/high-school/2025/07/09/kind-of-got-hooked-muskingum-valley-wrestlers-take-to-the-sand/84497198007/
Wrestling with the American Dream
Afghan refugees find a home on a San Antonio high school athletics team
by Brant deBoer
Elham Jalak and Mustafa Pashtoon met for the first time on a flight from Kabul in February 2016. Jalak was 6 years old, Pashtoon just 8. Their fathers had known each other in the Afghan Army, and their families came to the United States through the Special Immigrant Visa program, which has helped resettle Afghan citizens who worked with the United States during the war. In America, their dads hoped to find better jobs and education for their children.
It was a big plane, an Emirates double-decker, and the two boys sat next to each other. They didn’t know what to expect once they landed, aside from what they had seen in the movies, and neither spoke English. “Not even one word,” Pashtoon later told the Texas Observer. “I didn’t even know how to write my name.” After the 16-hour flight to Houston, they flew to San Antonio, their new home, where they settled in a northwest neighborhood known for its diverse immigrant communities. A couple years later, their families relocated to San Antonio’s West Side.
The pair started playing sports. “I played soccer, cross-country, track, golf, tennis, soccer, and then I did football and basketball,” Jalak proudly recounted. “We played together.” They sometimes speak about their experiences unemotionally, as if every teenager were forced to flee a war-torn country. Occasionally, they break into Pashto with each other, then switch back to English.
When I first met them at an away junior varsity tournament at Legacy of Educational Excellence (LEE) High School, they were wrestling. In the gym bleachers, Jalak and Pashtoon, now 15 and 17, were waiting for their next matches along with Saifullah Gul, another Afghan immigrant. Altogether, they were among five Afghan wrestlers on Sidney Lanier High School’s team at that point in the season, about a quarter of the entire team.
Traditional Afghan wrestling—known as Pehlwani—is a popular pastime for boys in the south-central Asian nation, so many Afghan refugees find a natural home on high school wrestling teams in America. This phenomenon is prevalent in California and Virginia, the states with the largest populations of Afghan immigrants. In Texas, the state with the third-largest concentration, it’s pretty much happening in one place: San Antonio’s West Side, and thanks to one person: Faridullah “Ferrari” Samsor. … more at … https://www.texasobserver.org/afghan-refugees-san-antonio-high-school-wrestling/
2025 U.S. Marine Corps Junior Nationals Rosters: Arkansas, California, Michigan, Nebraska, Texas and more
Starting on July 1, USA Wrestling is publishing the state team rosters for the 2025 U.S. Marine Corps Junior Nationals set for Fargo, N.D. State teams will be posted when a final roster has been submitted and confirmed with the state association.
We continue with the following rosters today: Arkansas, California, Michigan, Nebraska and Texas.
The first rosters released were Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
As new rosters are released, they will be posted here in alphabetical order.
State Rosters for the 2025 U.S. Marine Corps Junior Nationals #
July 9, 2025 #
Arkansas #
Junior Girls and Boys Rosters
California #
Michigan #
Nebraska #
16U Girls and Boys Rosters … more at … https://www.themat.com/news/2025/july/01/fargo-rosters-maine-maryland-nevada-ohio-south-dakota-west-virginia
John Parker Repeats As CSC Academic All-America
Junior standout wrestler John Parker was named to the 2025 Academic All-America® at-large second team selected by College Sports Communicators.
It’s the second consecutive year that Parker was named to the second team.
Parker, a two-time Super Region champion and national tournament qualifier at 197 pounds, was the Conference Carolinas 2024-25 Winter Scholar-Athlete of the Year Presented by Hudl for men’s wrestling. This season Parker posted a 27-9 record, with five wins against nationally ranked opponents and finished the season ranked #11 in his weight class.
Parker is a two-time NWCA Division 2 Scholar All-American. He was named the 2024-25 Newberry College Male Student-Athlete of the Year and was the men’s wrestling 2023-34 Elite 23 winner for Conference Carolinas.
He was one of 30 student-athletes representing five different sports to be named to the first two teams. Parker is the sixth Newberry College student-athlete to earn CSC Academic All-America® honors multiple times. The Yulee, Fla., native is a Mathematics Education major … more at … https://newberrywolves.com/news/2025/7/9/mens-wrestling-john-parker-repeats-as-csc-academic-all-america.aspx
Friday From the Archives: Your memories go beyond just ‘Fargo’
By Sandy Stevens
Oh, the memories!
From swatting mosquitoes after the Fargo Flood to Fred Feeney explaining to Willie Nelson that the white-clad referees were not selling ice cream, recollections of the Junior Nationals over nearly 50 years surfaced when I recently posed this question on Facebook:
“If you’ve ever wrestled, coached, officiated, paired, volunteered, photographed, covered or cheered at the National Junior Freestyle Championships in the past 50 years, what was your most memorable experience?”
Recollections traversed the five decades and five sites of the Junior Nationals, as the tournament took place in Iowa City (1971-82), Cedar Falls (1983-90), Warrensburg (1991) and St. Paul (1992) before moving to Fargo in 1993.
Here’s a sampling of those memories, beginning with Morrie Adams, who cited the earliest: “Help recruit volunteers and set up the first Junior Nationals Tournament in Iowa City.”
Ed Kane: “Officiating the first Junior Nationals. Vince Zuaro said, ‘Good job kid,’ but he was sitting me down because I wasn’t quite ready to officiate the finals!”
Mike Pickford: “In Iowa City at the (un-air-conditioned) recreation center, when it was so hot and we were still going after 10 p.m.”
Pamela Jean Gibbons: “(Being told that) I was going to run the UNI Dome scoreboard for freestyle finals.”
Randall Balch: “Many years ago, starting the finals before you introduced the wrestlers. The match was over in like 20 seconds, and you said, ‘And the wrestlers for this match were….’ I’ll never start a match early again!”
Colleen Holst Flathers: “So many fun memories as a student trainer in the UNI Dome, including an orthopedic surgeon from New York who didn’t realize that corn grew on a plant. We took him to a cornfield before his flight back home.”
Ken Chertow: “Sandy Stevens asking me how to pronounce my name at Junior Nationals. Then days later, announcing that I was the first Junior National champion ever from West Virginia. A few days later, I won freestyle and OW, too. Memories of a lifetime!”
Nate Spieth: “Having to take cover in the tunnels because there was a tornado outside.”
TJ Bramblec: “A pen fell off my shirt collar while (officiating). Circling the mat, I nonchalantly changed levels and flipped it off the mat, not realizing that the direction of ‘the flying object’ was on a dead line with (referee) Belinda Brown’s forehead. … more at … https://www.win-magazine.com/2025/07/03/friday-from-the-archives-your-memories-go-beyond-just-fargo/
UNC Wrestling Welcomes 10 Newcomers For 2025-26 Campaign
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Entering year three under the direction of head coach Rob Koll, the North Carolina wrestling program has welcomed 10 newcomers for the 2025-26 campaign.
The newest group of Tar Heels includes eight freshmen and two transfers. Read below for more information:
Nate Askew
149 lbs.
Suwanee, Ga. | Baylor School
• Wrestled for three seasons under coach Rex Kendle at the Baylor School.
• Was a member of the 2024 United States U17 World Team.
• A three-time prep All-America and two-time state champion prior to arriving in Chapel Hill.
Matthew Botello
133 lbs.
Hingham, Mass. | Wyoming Seminary
• Wrestled for three seasons at Wyoming Seminary under coach Cornell Robinson.
• A two-time prep national champion prior to arriving at UNC.
• Becomes the fifth sibling to wrestle collegiately.
Mikey Calcagno
197 lbs.
Elmhurst, Ill. | IC Catholic Prep
• Wrestled for four seasons under coach Danny Alccocer at IC Catholic Prep.
• A two-time state champion during high school career.
• Played football as well, helping ICCP to a 2023 state championship.
• Father played college football at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
Bryce Hepner
165 lbs.
Avon, Ohio | St. Edward | Ohio State
• A transfer from Ohio State, spending five seasons with the Buckeyes.
• During his time in Columbus, collected 25 victories on the mat.
• In prep career, reached the Ohio state finals in three-straight seasons, including back-to-back titles as a sophomore and junior.
• Was a three-time freestyle state champion and three-time Ironman placer during prep career.
Liam Hickey
133 lbs.
Raleigh, N.C. | Cardinal Gibbons
• Wrestled under coaches Brandon Palmer and Casey Gashaw at Cardinal Gibbons in Raleigh.
• Was a two-time state champion … more at … https://goheels.com/news/2025/7/1/wrestling-welcomes-10-newcomers-for-2025-26-campaign
U.N.C. Wrestling Announces 2026 ACC Schedule
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Entering year three under the direction of head coach Rob Koll, the North Carolina wrestling program has announced its 2026 Atlantic Coast Conference schedule for the upcoming season. The Tar Heels will wrestle Pitt, Duke and Stanford at home inside Carmichael Arena, with road dates against Virginia, NC State and Virginia Tech.
Carolina opens the ACC slate with back-to-back duals on the road, traveling to Virginia (Jan. 16) and rival NC State (Jan. 23). The Tar Heels conclude the month of January with the conference home opener against Pitt (Jan. 30), followed by a home matchup against Duke (Feb. 6).
The program closes the conference portion of the regular season at Virginia Tech (Feb. 13) and the home finale against Stanford (Feb. 20). Last season, Carolina claimed a share of the ACC regular season title, … more at … https://goheels.com/news/2025/6/30/wrestling-announces-2026-acc-schedule
Northeastern State University Announces Historic Athletics Expansion With 7 New Teams
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — Northeastern State University is planning the largest expansion of its athletics department in school history, adding seven varsity teams over the next two years.
Men’s and women’s wrestling, along with volleyball, will debut as varsity sports in the 2026–27 academic year.
Men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track and field, as well as men’s and women’s cross country, will be added for the 2027–28 academic year.
Previously, in March 2025, the department announced the revival of its men’s tennis program following a 24-year absence, and it is already set for competition for the upcoming fall season. In total, NSU will have ten additional programs eligible for national championship opportunities for student-athletes.
The addition of wrestling and volleyball is expected to bring more than 100 new student-athletes to NSU campuses by fall 2026. With Tahlequah and Broken Arrow set to host competitions, the region is projected to benefit from roughly 20 additional athletic events annually.
“Once our expansion is complete, we look to have over 300 new student-athletes on our campus,” Director of Athletics John Sisemore said. “Working with Northeastern State University President Dr. Rodney Hanley and the NSU cabinet members, we knew this would be great for the future of NSU and huge for Tahlequah. There will be an immediate impact on the local economy with the addition of these programs, which will bring thousands of annual spectators and families to the area.” … more at … https://goriverhawksgo.com/news/2025/6/30/mens-cross-country-nsu-announces-historic-athletics-expansion-with-7-new-teams.aspx
TDR blog
After 20 seasons of publicizing wrestling The TakeDown Report’s (TDR) focus has changed to the collecting of college coaching records from North America since 1903. We will continue to recognize and reward successful wrestlers in eastern North Carolina (east of Raleigh & Fayetteville), assist with schools in starting or re-starting a team and this blog. Join us on our FaceBook Page – “The TakeDown Report” for photos and news. Please send results, stories, links and news to pass along. E-mail us at takedownreport@gmail.com
Martin Fleming, Editor
Takedown Report
Takedown Report 