NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS Dieringer looks ahead
Winning the Hodge Trophy is a goal which the elite college wrestlers aim for. Only NCAA champions with unbeaten records and dominant performances advance to the finals. Many of the Dan Hodge Trophy winners go on to great success at the Olympic level, such as 2012 Olympic champion and three-time World champion Jordan Burroughs. This year’s finalist field was absolutely loaded, with three-time NCAA champion Alex Dieringer of Oklahoma State up against first-time champions Nahshon Garrett of Cornell, Zain Retherford of Penn State and Kyle Snyder of Ohio State. All four had legitimate claims to the trophy. When it all sorted out, it was Dieringer who won the trophy.
He finished his career with a 6-2 victory over Isaac Jordan at 165 pounds in the 2016 NCAA finals in New York City. The win gave him a remarkable 82-match win- ning streak. After placing third as a fresh- man, Dieringer ran the table for three straight NCAA titles.
His senior year featured a 33-0 record with 12 pins, seven technical falls and eight major decisions. Dieringer became the 16th all-time Oklahoma State wrestler to win three national championships and the 14th Cowboy to earn four All-American honors. Oklahoma State head coach John Smith placed Dieringer among the top five Cowboy wrestlers of all time. “The award went to the right guy. This has been his No. 1 goal all year,” Smith told WIN Magazine, which presents the WIN Magazine/Culture House Dan Hodge Trophy, presented by ASICS.
Some people might take a break after such an impressive college career, but Dieringer has higher goals. A 2013 Junior World silver medalist in freestyle, Dieringer qualified for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials, an event where he was going at 74 kg, which is currently ruled by the above-mentioned Jordan Burroughs. At the Olympic Trials, Dieringer opened with a 10-4 win over Adam Hall, before losing in the semifinals to two-time Olympic Trials runner-up Andrew Howe, 5-2. He wrestled back to beat Logan Massa, 10-0 and Adam Hall again, 6-3, to take third. In the true third-place bout, he stopped Nick Marable, the only American to ever beat Jordan Burroughs, by a 2-1 margin to place third on the U.S. Senior National Team.
“I am always going in to win,” said Dieringer after the Trials ended for him. “I have never wrestled somebody like Howe before. Usually I am dominant. He got on my head and to my hips. He kind of tired me out and shot that slide-by single to beat me. I am going to prepare for next year and I’m excited for it,” he said. Dieringer said he only took a week off
after NCAAs, and looks forward to train- ing in freestyle full-time where he has set high goals for himself. “There are certain feels in freestyle that
are different than folkstyle. I just have to work on those feels in practice,” he said. Dieringer was third in his first NCAA Championships and went on to win the Hodge Trophy. He was third in his first Olympic Trials. It will be fun to see where that leads him in freestyle.
Alex Dieringer attempts an ankle pick on Adam Hall at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials, where Dieringer placed third. Austin Bernard photo.
28 USA Wrestler
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