After hitting a major roadblock at the U.S. Olympic Trials, David Taylor decided to take one final bow from the competition to pursue his coaching journey. Shortly after, the former Nittany Lion joined Oklahoma State University as their freestyle wrestling coach. With the collegiate season right around the corner, many are wondering what the 33-year-old has up his sleeves. 

At a recent press conference, Taylor was asked what his biggest challenge or surprise was as a first-time head coach. The question caught the head coach by surprise, but he finally settled on scheduling. “Yeah, I didn’t know there was so much flexibility in scheduling,” the 33-year-old stated. 

David Taylor reiterated that, due to having no experience as a head coach, several other coaches would try to twist his hand regarding certain things. He revealed, “It’s the way we do it, you know, I’m like, ‘No, it’s not the way do it, you know schedule says this, we’re going to do this.'” However, Taylor eventually realized that scheduling could be flexible.

“Like we’ve wrestled OU, you know, home and way our whole, you know, really historically forever. But they only want to do one match this year. So, we’re only going to wrestle them once this year at OU.” The 33-year-old then added that they didn’t want to come back, which prompted some laughter from the crowd. 

However, he circled back to the schedule. “So, I think that was surprising to me, the jockeying with that, like you know, just why we haven’t released our schedule.” However, shortly after, OSU released their home schedule of 7 matches for the 2024-2025 NCAA season. Here’s who they will be hosting at the Gallagher-Iba Arena:

Even though this caught David Taylor by surprise, the 33-year-old’s passion for wrestling burned brighter than ever. He now had a new challenge on his hands, returning to wrestling while also balancing his responsibilities as the head coach at OSU. But even then, he found a way to work around that. How did he do that? 

David Taylor has a plan for the NCAA Season

The wrestler opened up that his strategy for the team relied on planning and precision. Taylor reiterated that they would plan out each RTC and college athlete for the long and short terms. The 33-year-old understands that this isn’t an ideal situation; his return to the mat was a surprise for everyone. 

However, David Taylor believes this would be good in the long term. But his contention could be considered an advantage for the wrestlers at OSU. “We talk about maybe some of the accomplishments I had, but they hadn’t really been alongside someone that was the best in the world, or somebody that was training at that level. So, they got to see that,” the OSU head coach added.

Seeing how he had just joined OSU as their head coach, it’s safe to assume that they wouldn’t be okay with it, right? However, they backed him up in a heartbeat. Before the World Trials, the OSU Athletic Director Chad Weiberg stated, “I think it’s a great thing any time that we can put the brand of the program out in the wrestling world.” 

David Taylor also revealed what to expect from the season. “This year, the national tournament’s in Philadelphia, so everything we do moves backwards from there,” the 33-year-old stated. However, the OSU head coach is prepared for everything. “We’re developing that foundation now, so I think it’s been a very successful period of time that we’ve been here.” His primary goal is to help his team for the collegiate seasons. Even though he’s still navigating his way through this experience, this is definitely a great start.