‘It’s Funny how History Repeats Itself…’: Penn State Wrestling Legends Join Their Legendary HC in Prestigious Club

Seven people in human history have won four NCAA wrestling championships, and four of them are associated with Penn State.

Carter Starocci (174) and Aaron Brooks (197) sealed their fourth titles Saturday night. 

22 years earlier– to the exact date, as a matter of fact– Cael Sanderson won his fourth national title, ending his college career 159-0. 

Sanderson, of course, is now the coach of Penn State wrestling. With the help of Starocci, Brooks, and many others, won his 11th national title in 13 years this past weekend.

Another four-time champ whose connection with Penn State isn’t as obvious is Kyle Dake. Dake won his titles for Cornell and isn’t an official member of Sanderson’s coaching staff, but is a member of the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club.

Brooks is out of eligibility and thus will end his college career 89-3 with five All-American honors, four national championships, and likely, a Hodge Trophy soon.

“Praise the lord, man,” Brooks told reporters after he shut out NC State’s Trent Hilday 6-0 to end his college career on top. “To be able to be present tonight is a gift. Our team, it was a special night, family being here. Family and friends, so I was just blessed that tonight played out the way it did. And regardless (of the outcome,) I’m very blessed. But it was fun.”

Brooks remembers being six or seven years old (he thinks he was seven) and getting a disk of Sanderson, a disk which revealed some of his accolades.

Aaron’s father, John, told his son that the man he was watching was “the greatest wrestler ever.”

Now, Brooks has matched Sanderson with four national titles. 

“To be wrestling in this program and him as my head coach,” Brooks said. “Some days I look, I’m like ‘man, that was great.’ You never know where God is going to take you.”

“It’s pretty cool. Looking back, I said when we first came in. Just seeing the growth and the growth in both of us, but having someone else to be a part of that journey and do it with is a lot of fun. So, we’re blessed.”

Of the seven four-time national champs, Sanderson is the only one to accomplish that feat while wrestling for an African American head coach, doing it for Bobby Douglas at Iowa State.

Both Starocci and Brooks are half-Black. 

“It’s funny how history repeats itself a little bit,” Starocci said. “So that’s pretty interesting. It’s cool just to, like I said, just seeing how those coaches, how much they care about us. It’s something that I’d never experienced before. Just me growing up, I was always so hungry, and always so driven to get better. It was really rare to find that, and just coming to Penn State, everyone’s like that.”

“As a coach, every year you just want to see your kids smiling at the end of the season and seeing them reaching their goals. Obviously, in situations like Carter and Aaron, the pressure mounts. But they both are competitors and that’s what they live for, that’s what they were born for. Just happy for them.”

There are a lot of expectations that come with going for a fourth national title but for Sanderson, Starocci and Brooks placed expectations on themselves long before this season, which helped them get ready. 

“They obviously planned on winning as freshmen,” he said, “so it’s not like all of a sudden they have this chance to win their fourth. It’s something that they’ve been working on for four years, so it’s more about them just being able to be themselves and focusing on the things that they’ve worked on, and that just is eternal principles and just gratitude and those things will kind of keep you even centered. When you don’t, you kind of drift away and it makes things more difficult.”

Brooks finished his last season 22-0 with 20 bonus point victories, so there was never much of a doubt.

Until Penn State wrestling had its last dual meet of the season, there wasn’t much of a doubt for Starocci, either. 

But that’s when he suffered an injury serious enough that he needed helped off the mat.

Sanderson decided to hold Starocci out of the Big Ten Championships, and although he qualified for the National Championships with an at-large bid, many wondered how healthy he’d be.

Starocci clearly wasn’t at 100%, as evidenced by his big knee brace, but he won the whole thing, anyway. 

“Aaron, obviously, was just very dominant all year long,” Sanderson said, “and Carter had some adversity, which is pretty amazing. He wasn’t able to wrestle the way he wanted to, but wrestling with the injury he had was really impressive. There’s not a lot of human beings on the planet that would be able to do what he just did.”