Why Oklahoma State Wrestling Coach David Taylor Decided to Compete Again

STILLWATER — David Taylor thought he had accomplished all he wanted to as a wrestler.

Taylor was hired as Oklahoma State’s wrestling coach in May to replace the retiring John Smith. It was the beginning of Taylor’s coaching career, and at the moment, the end to his competition days. But last week, OSU announced Taylor would compete again at the United States World Team Trials. He swept world bronze medalist Zahid Valencia in the best-of-three championship series last weekend to win a national championship and earn a spot on the U.S. World Team ahead of the Senior World Championships in Tirana, Albania on Oct. 28-31.

Before coaching, Taylor won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021. He also has three gold medals and a silver from the World Championships, with this being the sixth time he made a U.S. World Team. Even earlier in his career at Penn State, Taylor was a two-time winner of the Dan Hodge Trophy, college wrestling’s Heisman Trophy, and won a pair of NCAA individual NCAA titles. The Nittany Lions also won a team national championship every season Taylor was in the lineup.

His competitive days seemingly ended in April after he came up short of making his second straight Olympic team. A few weeks later, he was named the new leader of Cowboy wrestling.

“That’s just how life works,” Taylor said. “It created the opportunity for me to be down here, and I’m so grateful for that. If things go different at Olympic trials I’m not here. …

“The move was a good move, so I think that things work out the way that they do. But then when you step away from it, it gives you different perspective coming into practice, and it just created an energy and excitement that I hadn’t felt — I hadn’t felt that in four years. And sitting and talking to guys, you’re talking about, when you have that fire to do something, it’s such a small window in wrestling. And I started to feel that again. Shoot, if I have it, I think this is a really good opportunity for OSU wrestling, I think it’s a great opportunity for the RTC to be competing in a World Championship. It just kind of happened pretty naturally.”

Now in charge of a wrestling program and others’ careers, though, Taylor felt he needed to get permission. He first asked administration. Taylor said when he interviewed for the coaching job, OSU administration assumed he would still be competing while coaching, so they were still onboard. Next, his team was excited at the opportunity of training alongside their coach, and Taylor said it even took training to a new level of intensity.

There’s still another decision to be made with administration and his team, as well as internally, for Taylor, though. The World Championships will be a few weeks before the Cowboys’ season starts in mid-November and Taylor still hasn’t confirmed if he’ll compete for a world title or not, even after earning the opportunity to do so. Taylor said administration is supportive of him making the trip, but he still hasn’t talked to the team yet.

“We have things, obviously, that we gotta work through and making sure everything is in place,” Taylor said. “That’s a decision that we’ll make. I think to go to the World Championships this year, it’s in six weeks, there are some exciting opponents that I could get a chance to wrestle, but to go would need a little bit more preparation than what I had going into the trials. So just kind of talking through what that looks like, and we’ll be able to make a decision here pretty soon.”