Cael Sanderson earns 200th win as Penn State wrestling coach with victory over Iowa

Penn State wrestling coach Cael Sanderson has hit another coaching milestone. Sanderson won his 200th dual as Penn State’s head coach Friday night when his team secured a victory over the Iowa Hawkeyes, 29-6.

The win gives him 244 overall wins — with 44 at Iowa State where he began his head coaching career — and builds on his Penn State record for wins as the program’s head coach.

Sanderson joined the Nittany Lions ahead of the 2010 season, earning his first PSU win over Bloomsburg in the second dual of that season. He then led them to a ninth place finish at the 2010 NCAA Wrestling Championships — the lowest any of his teams have finished.

His program went on to win the next four national titles before a sixth place finish at the 2015 NCAA Wrestling Championships, which proved to be a mere blip on the radar for Sanderson and the program. They again won four straight titles before the 2020 NCAA Wrestling Championships were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A second place finish in 2021 followed and so did two more team titles in 2022 and 2023, with yet another on the horizon in 2024.

Sanderson’s 10 national titles as a head coach puts him among the elite in all of college sports with no sign of the program slowing down any time soon.