Blue White Illustrated

When Frank Molinaro reached the height of his Penn State wrestling career, he was center stage in the sold-out Scottrade Center in St. Louis with his arms extended after he had won his first NCAA championship in his final colle- giate match. But when he reached a new peak in his interna- tional career, Molinaro was in a much more un- likely spot. This time he was on a golf course. He had just hit his fourth par in a row when he heard the buzzing – call, text message, call, text message. So he reached for his phone and looked at the first text. "You're the man," it read. He had an idea what it might be about, he had heard rumblings, but he couldn't be certain, and as he started to gather fur- ther information his phone ran out of power. In the middle of Mountain View Country Club on the outskirts of State College, Molinaro sprinted back to his vehicle in the parking lot and plugged in his phone to learn the news: He had qualified for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. Magomedmurad Gadzhiev of Poland and Andriy Kvyatkovskyy of Ukraine had been disqualified by United World Wrestling due to doping violations, which meant that the next two wrestlers at 65 kilograms would take their place. Molinaro was one of them. "It was a great surprise in the middle of a round," he said. A much-needed round of golf at that, an overdue moment of relaxation. As Molinaro explained during an interview in the Lorenzo Wrestling Complex in mid-May, the three days that followed his last date of competition earlier that month had been among the most excru- ciating of his life. "It was really tough actually," Molinaro said. "I had to kind of refocus my per- spective. I was trying to stay balanced and, to be honest, I didn't do a really good job with it. I was staring at walls and not sleeping much. I kept praying and I really believed that I was going to get it but I didn't want to get my hopes up. It was really emotional going from really high to really low. I really had no stability throughout the whole process until I found out." Molinaro's journey had taken a re- markable turn in early April after he claimed the championship at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Iowa City, Iowa. He then went 1-1 and was eliminated from a tournament in Mongolia but still had a chance to make the Olympic field if he could finish in the top two in a last- chance qualifier in Istanbul. However, Molinaro fell in the quarter- final round of the Turkish tournament, 5-2, to Boris Novachkov of Bulgaria, a devastating defeat that brought back memories of his junior year at Penn State when, after winning 32 of his first 34 matches, he lost in the NCAA final. Molinaro collapsed in the locker room floor, fellow PSU assistant coach Cody Sanderson and U.S. team coach Bruce Burnett by his side. "That was probably a defining mo- ment in my life," Molinaro said. "After that happened I was crushed. I was just completely broken down. I can't even really describe the feeling. I've never re- ally felt that before. I've always been able to come out of those moments when it really mattered. That was the first time that I really kind of fell short and [Sanderson and Burnett] just know how it goes. "So they were sitting by me and just kind of being there without saying any- thing, because there's not much that can be said that can change anything. Then I went into the back room and was laying down and I was just crying for like 45 minutes. Then [Burnett] came up to me. At this point I hadn't even thought about wrestling. I don't know why. I was just thinking about how I didn't win. He said, 'I love you kid, but if you have any chance of qualifying, you have to get up and win these two matches.' It was against Belarus and Kazakhstan. I was taking my shoes off when he was telling me this, so I'm like, 'All right, I'll put my shoes back on.' He's like, 'Yeah, hustle up, too. You're on deck.' "Not to sound dramatic, but I felt like at the time I couldn't even stand up and walk back to the place where we were sitting. Then we got my stuff back on and Coach Cody just reminded me that I was tough and I've trained hard and that I would be fine." Three years earlier, when he left an as- sistant coaching job at Rutgers to return to his alma mater for a similar position, it was with the understanding that he was going to shoot for the 2016 Olympics. That's when, he said, "I really got this in my heart that I wanted to do it." So when he suffered that loss in Istan- bul, potentially ending his hopes of competing in the Games, it was as though the rug had been swept from un- der his feet. He had dealt with disap- pointment before, as in 2011 when he lost to Kyle Dake for the NCAA title at 149 pounds, but this one had more final- ity to it – at least that's what it seemed like at the time to the 27-year-old. NEWS NOTES W R E S T L I N G Molinaro heading to Summer Olympics & MOLINARO

• Cover