Penn State’s Mitchell Mesenbrink fitting in well to Nittany Lions’ wrestling room, lineup

Penn State wrestling coach Cael Sanderson joked during last week’s media availability about camping in Mitchell Mesenbrink’s front yard.

He and his staff would’ve gone to those lengths to have had him sooner, Sanderson said, rather than waiting for him to transfer from Cal Baptist in the offseason.

“I don’t know if he’s surprising people, because everyone has watched him develop. He’s doing really well,” Sanderson told the media on Tuesday. “He’s tough to prepare for, for a lot of reasons. He’s got great flexibility and speed. He’s just got to continue trending upward in all things, and he’ll be good to go.”

Mesenbrink did surprise a pair of wrestlers from Michigan last weekend and will look to continue his dominance Sunday when the Nittany Lions travel to face Maryland at noon.

The redshirt freshman will get a break after taking out four straight ranked wrestlers with the Terrapins’ AJ Rodrigues, who is 6-9 on the season. With all those ranked wins, Mesenbrink has vaulted up in the rankings — to No. 7 in the country.

On Tuesday, Mesenbrink said he already “kind of forgot” about the Michigan road trip, which he sees as a positive.

“It’s cool to live in the moment,” he said. “I try (to live in the moment), but once I leave the arena, it’s done. It’s, ‘let’s keep getting better.’”

Mesenbrink said he’s always trying to make sure he’s having fun when he’s out there on the mat. And it seems that he’s having a lot of fun, since he’s 13-0 on the season with bonus points in 11 of those wins.

As a matter of fact, Mesenbrink recorded bonus points in all four of those ranked wins.

He racked up a 17-2 technical fall on Oregon State’s Matthew Olguin, who prior to that match never lost by technical fall in his career, in 3:46 of wrestling time. Olguin only had three losses that he gave up bonus points in 81 matches.

Mesenbrink received an injury default against Indiana’s Tyler Lillard.

Last weekend, he dominated to an 11-1 major decision over Michigan’s Cameron Amine. It was a bout where Amine nearly was disqualified from due to too many stalls. Then, Mesenbrink found himself on his back against Michigan State’s Caleb Fish in the first period, but he came away with an 18-9 major decision.

“That’s one thing I’ve been really working on, not being frustrated and kind of whatever happens, happens. I’m controlling my own mind and my own things,” Mesenbrink said. “It’s kind of like stoicism, being able to control what you can control and not the external factors. I would not say it was frustrating (match with Amine). I had tons of fun. On Sunday, (Fish) put me on my back, I didn’t really feel like I was on my back, but it was good practice. There was 55 seconds left in the period, he’s going to have to freaking run away because I’m going to get another takedown.”

The pace that Mesenbrink had in the match with Amine is what nearly earned him a disqualification win. He said that is something he’s always had, and attributed it to his father, John.

Mesenbrink’s relationship with his father was unique in the fact that his dad was also his wrestling coach. It’s always tough when a parent and child are part of an athlete-coach situation because usually the relationship can be good on either the coaching end or the parenting end, but lacking on the other.

However, it was a great combination for Mesenbrink and his father.

“It was really profound in my early life. It’s not about winning or losing. It’s not about the outcome. It’s about the performance. Performance does matter,” Mesenbrink said. “People say a win is a win. He (his father) would say a win isn’t a win, because if you go out there and you’re just standing around, that’s not cool. To me, I would rather lose knowing I did every single thing possible than win, get off the mat and I just sat there.

“I’ve lost many matches in my career where I’ve just shot, world finals, state finals. There’s so many matches in my whole career where I’ve lost doing that (being the aggressor). It’s kind of like being at the right place now, fitting all the puzzle pieces together, where it’s not just go out shoot. It’s more precision on top of the pace and go.”

Mesenbrink also attributes his early success to joining Penn State’s program.

He said this time last year, he was having to get better on his own since he was redshirting. He was still part of Cal Baptist’s team, but his only competition was two duals.

He had pins in both matches, but that was it.

“Everybody’s journey is different. My journey, I try to focus on myself. My journey has just been really focused on the pace, and going out and getting points,” Mesenbrink said. “You like to surround yourself with like minded people. I think everybody in this room is like that. You’ve seen that from the dynasty that is Penn State wrestling, and the prowess that it exudes. David Taylor, Ed Ruth and on, those people went out there and crush people.”

No. 1 Penn State (6-0, 3-0 Big Ten) at Maryland (3-4, 1-4)

When: Noon Sunday

Where: XFinity Center Pavilion, College Park, MD

Radio: WOWY (103.1 FM)

TV: Big Ten Network

Online: Radio, Lionvision at GoPSUsports.com

X: @byncobler, @pennstatewrest