Local news from StateCollege.com and Centre County Partners. Read about Time to Show Some Extra Gratitude for Penn State’s Cael Sanderson; How About a 10-Year Contract? and more from the State College, PA region
As found on Penn State University’s website, below is Cael Sanderson’s bio. Learn about this coach’s career:
“On April 17, 2009, Penn State named national wrestling legend Cael Sanderson as its 12th head wrestling coach and immediately the nation looked East. Since that time, the wrestling landscape across the country has changed as Penn State has claimed eight NCAA championships and numerous Big Ten regular season and tournament titles, all while crowning numerous individual champions and maintaining the highest of academic standards.
A career begun in the Midwest…
At just 29 years old, Sanderson came to Penn State after three very productive years as the head coach at his alma mater, Iowa State. Sanderson’s teams did not finish any lower than fifth at the NCAA Championships and he never had a wrestler not qualify for nationals, getting 30-of-30 grapplers through to the championship tournament.
There are a number of athletes and entertainers who are known by one name and one name only – Tiger, Shaq, Pele, Beyoncé, Bono, and Sting come to mind – but coaches … not so much.
Around the world of college wrestling, the list of coaches who are that well-known has a solo entry: Cael.
Officially, he is Cael Norman Sanderson, 41. But drop that first name into a conversation about the sport in which he excelled as an athlete and is currently guiding Penn State to dynastic levels as a coach, and, yes, everybody knows his name.
He became Penn State’s head wrestling coach in April 2009, after three seasons as head coach at Iowa State. To quickly summarize his success, Sanderson – let’s call him Cael – won four high school titles for Wasatch High School in Heber City, Utah (1994-97); four NCAA titles for Iowa State (1999-2002) while winning 159 straight matches; and earned the sport’s highest honor by winning an Olympic gold medal in 2004. As a coach, he has earned mul