Adapt. Learn. Achieve.

It was a moment I’ll never forget because my fondest dream had just come true.

I was standing on the top step of the awards podium at the NCAA wrestling championships in 2018. I had just won the national title at 133 pounds, accomplishing a goal I’d set for myself as a little kid growing up in Apple Valley, Minnesota. It’s hard to explain the feeling I had in that instance, but, trust me, it was cool. 

As I looked out over the huge crowd and heard the cheers, I couldn’t help but become emotional. So many faces, so many scenes, rushed through my head. I thought about my friends and teammates at South Dakota State and how they’d made my life easier. I thought about my coach, Chris Bono, and how he’d become one of the most important figures in my life. I thought about my parents, Troy and Rhonda, and all the wisdom and encouragement they invested in me.

I also thought about a terrible mistake I’d made.

But you’ve got to own up to your mistakes. If you don’t talk about it, get it off your chest, it’s going to be an anchor at your feet. I messed up. I made a mistake. Now it’s about, “How can I make up for that and do the right thing? How can I have an impact on these kids that are watching me and always asking me for advice?”

I think I can inspire people with my story. I can show them that this happened to me; that I did this. It was a lot worse than what a lot of these kids are going through. If they saw that I could overcome these problems and still find my faith, still have success, it can inspire them to know that whatever they’re battling, they can get past it.

It’s going to be tough. The journey is not going to be fun when something like this happens, but you can overcome it, you can redeem yourself, you can be better and you can continue to strive for your goals.

You might be tempted to quit somewhere along the line. I was in that place. I was close to throwing in the towel and saying I’m done with wrestling. Luckily I didn’t. I have a good support system that got me back up on my feet and kept me going.

I’ve loved wrestling and everything about it since I was a really little kid. Right away I made a habit of writing down my goals. It was my dad’s idea. One of my first big goals was I wanted to be a Triple Crown winner — be a state champion in freestyle, Greco Roman and folk-style — which I accomplished. I’d write down how many push-ups I wanted to do in practice. I’d write down the tournaments I wanted to win. I have a lot of goals because you should always have something to strive for.

It’s something I use a ton today. I put those lists everywhere. I want people to see them. I want people to know what my goals are. If you do that, I think you believe in them more and you can be accountable for them. It makes everything come to life. I want everyone to know what I’m trying to do, what I’m trying to achieve and how I’m going to get there.

I get a lot of questions about my wrestling style. Most guys like to attack and score. I like turning their offense into my offense. My whole life I’ve been told not to do it that way. I don’t know if I just wanted to prove my coaches wrong or if I was just that bad at getting my legs out of danger, but it’s never changed since youth wrestling.

I like to do things a lot different. I’m always trying to make up new moves and go with the flow. If the plan doesn’t work, I find a new plan. It looks funky to a lot of people, but it works for me. I think my best thing is taking what went wrong and fixing it very quickly, making instant adjustments.

For me, wrestling is all about adapting to the moment. If you’re a champion one year and don’t make adjustments the next, you’re going to get your butt kicked. People are going to figure out what you’re doing. They’re going to study it and get better and improve and they’re going to beat you. But if you’re able to adapt and learn, that’s how you stay on top.

I think that’s how life is. You have to keep adjusting to whatever comes your way. You have to bring your best effort to every moment, but if you make a mistake, you can’t let it define who you are.

There was a time when I had no clue where I was or what I was supposed to do with my life and it all started with a poor choice. After winning three Minnesota state titles at Apple Valley High School, I was recruited to wrestle at Iowa. With 23 national championships, it’s one of the most dominant programs in any NCAA sport.

Looking back, a lot of dark forces were at work. The biggest thing for me is I didn’t feel like I had a lot in common with the other freshmen on the team. I didn’t feel connected. It was the first time I was away from my home and family. I didn’t feel like I had someone to talk to. I felt lost and alone. I felt that all I had at the time was wrestling and even that was unfulfilling because I was redshirting and injured. My alone time was pretty sad and depressing. My grades were starting to go down a little bit. A lot of things were adding up at once.

Most of all, I felt lost in my faith. I grew up going to church and being involved. It was a big part of my life, but I wouldn’t say I owned my faith yet. My parents were big into their faith and I was around it, but I really hadn’t figured it out for myself and I hadn’t decided on my own what I really believed in. I knew the Bible verses. I showed up to church. But it was only after I got into trouble that I really started praying more and strengthening my relationship with God.

After months of turning down invitations to go out with my teammates, I decided to join them and celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in Cedar Rapids, which is not far from the campus in Iowa City. I’m not a drinker, so, obviously, when you don’t drink too much and you decide to drink, it can go south pretty quickly. Me and two of my teammates ended up making some bad decisions that night. We were going into peoples’ cars and taking things. We were taking things — stupid little things like coins in the console and phone chargers — for the thrill of it. We were just being idiots. I didn’t really think about the people I was impacting. That’s the stuff, still to this day, I think about and still feel bad about.

I recently got a taste of my own medicine. Less than a month ago someone broke into my car on campus here and took a bunch of random stuff. It didn’t feel good, but that’s what I did to a lot of people that night.

The cops came and rounded us up, but before they took us to jail we sat in the back of a police cruiser for probably five hours while they collected evidence and stuff. Sitting there in handcuffs, one thought kept popping up in my head.

“You’re an idiot. What were you thinking?”

Going to jail was, hands down, the scariest moment of my life. I’d never been anywhere near that type of situation. I remember it vividly to this day.

We were all in one big holding cell, me and 30 to 35 other guys. They toss you a little blanket and put you in there. I grabbed my blanket and I went and hid in the corner pretty much. I didn’t really know what to do because they only let you call a local number — you can’t make any long-distance calls — so I couldn’t get a hold of anybody. I sat there waiting for the better part of two days.

That gave me a lot of time for reflecting. I was scared — scared to tell my parents, scared to tell Coach Brands (Iowa head coach Tom Brands), scared of what was going to happen to me. I really did think my life was over at that point.

There were a lot of scary people in that holding cell. Guys who were in trouble for things probably worse than what we did. I kept thinking, “How did I end up here? I tried to do things right, so how did I end up in this jail cell?” Guys were sitting next to me laughing, saying this was their fifth time behind bars. It didn’t seem real to me. It was very, very scary.

Looking back, I can laugh at this: They bring you a tray of food — a sandwich, weird-looking fruit and milk — but I wasn’t hungry at all. I was freaking out and couldn’t think about eating. Immediately this big, big dude is sitting next to me and he’s like, “You going to eat that?” I just shook my head. He snatched up my tray and my milk and everything.

I was out of jail a good three or four hours before I could bring myself to call home. That was by far the hardest phone call of my life. I didn’t have the words to say. I called them crying. I couldn’t get a word out. My mom wound up driving down to get me. Not a lot of words were spoken on the way home. Just me and my thoughts mostly. My mom didn’t ask too many questions, but my dad has never been afraid of telling it like it is.

“That’s not how we raised you,” he said soon after I walked in the door. Of course, he was right.

All in all, it was a pretty humbling time for me. That summer I got a job selling cell phones at Target. I wasn’t wrestling. I reached out to some schools, but with the investigation still going on they all steered clear. I thought I might go to community college, but then my aunt Kelly sat me down for a talk. In short, she asked if I still loved wrestling. I told her I did. She encouraged me to give it another shot.

During a family vacation, I emailed coaches throughout the Midwest and alerted them to my situation. Coach Bono got back to me really quick and said he wanted to see me right away. The first thing he said when I sat down in his office was, “Tell me what happened.” I told him everything. I told him the truth. That was hard for me to throw it all on the table because I hadn’t yet owned up to it all fully.

Coach Bono said he’d gotten clearance from his athletic director and was prepared to put it all on the line to get me there. He took me in knowing the charges against me had yet to be resolved. They were after I enrolled, but that was a big-time gamble by Coach Bono. “One little mistake and you’re gone,” he said. I told him he wouldn’t have a single problem with me. Driving home, I thought to myself, “This is where I want to be.” The next day I called and said I was in.

My four years at South Dakota State were amazing. My new teammates were incredible to me. No judgments. They accepted me for me. That was big. But it was humbling for sure. I showed up at almost 170 pounds. I was out of shape because I hadn’t wrestled in seven months. It was ugly to start. It was bad to say the least. I ran dead last with the heavyweights on conditioning runs. I was barely making it through workouts. It was a really long process to get back to where I was.

There was a moment when I questioned if I was up for the challenge. I got pinned in one of my first matches by a junior-college kid in a tournament, but encouragement from my dad kept me going. I knew I’d turned a corner when I beat some nationally-ranked guys in the second half of the season and made it to the NCAA tournament.

A year after finishing second in 2017, I became the first South Dakota State athlete in history to win an NCAA individual title. I’ll never forget the post-match bear hug from Coach Bono. I’ll never forget the feeling of redemption. I’d thought there was no way that I’d ever be in this spot. I thought it was over. But I clawed my way back and was able to achieve my goal. I was just so grateful. All I could think about were the people that helped me get there and how God helped me through it all.

I believe things happen for a reason and God has a plan for all of us. That explains how I ended up with the Badgers. I injured my back and needed surgery, which sidelined me for almost all of the 2019 season. In the meantime, Coach Bono had taken the job at Wisconsin. I applied for an injury waiver to gain a sixth season of eligibility from the NCAA and decided to use it as a graduate transfer. I chose to come to Madison in part because I have an opportunity to get a Master’s degree from one of the top business schools in the world.

I came to Wisconsin intent on winning a second national title at 133 pounds, the deepest, toughest weight class in the country. But that’s not going to happen because the NCAA has canceled everything due to the coronavirus pandemic. My college career is done.

My big goal now is to compete in the Summer Olympics. I took an important step in that direction when I qualified for the trials last fall, beating three NCAA champions in the process, but now I’m in a holding pattern because the Games in Tokyo, Japan, have been postponed until 2021 due to the coronavirus. It’s disappointing for sure, but it’s out of my control.

We got the official word about the NCAA’s decision from Coach Bono and it kind of blindsided a lot of guys. I think there were 50 different emotions going around the room. Some guys angry. Some guys very sad. It was surreal. We were all thinking, “Is this really happening?” Then the next day we were told we couldn’t come back to the facility and that we had to go home. It’s all so weird. We have no idea when we’re going to be back being a team again.

I feel most badly for the seniors. I felt for the guys who never got to wrestle at the national championships. I felt for guys like Johnny Sebastian, our 184-pounder who came back for a sixth season aiming to get on the NCAA podium. I felt for guys like Spencer Lee of Iowa, who had a shot at becoming a four-time NCAA champion.

For a moment, I was like, “Man, this sucks.” But then I was overtaken by gratitude, just an appreciation for what I was able to do as an NCAA athlete and the things I was able to achieve.

I found myself flashing back to my whole journey and everything I’d been through. The relationships I’d built and the goals that I’d been able to achieve. At the end of the day, I’m happy with my NCAA career. It’s definitely not ending how I imagined, but I’m good with it.