Jason Nolf remembers the conversations inside the Penn State locker room with trainers discussing the diagnosis and the possibility he’d miss the remainder of his junior season. 

It was Jan. 28 — 46 days before the start of the 2018 NCAA Championships — and the reigning 157-pound national champion had torn the posterior cruciate and lateral collateral ligaments in his right knee. 

“Everybody was like, ‘This isn’t good,’” Nolf said. “Somebody said, ‘It’s likely you’re going to be out for the rest of the season.’” 

But while others were calculating recovery timetables, Nolf’s mind was beginning to formulate a plan for what it would take to win college wrestling’s most grueling tournament on a compromised right leg.  

“I just remember in my head knowing I was going to be back — I’m going to do whatever it takes to be able to come back and wrestle because I want to be the national champ,” he said. “So whatever it takes, I’m going to do it. Even if I’m at 50 percent, I’m going to do it. I think having that mindset, where a lot of people are like, ‘Well, I got hurt, that stinks, but now it’s an excuse for why I didn’t win.’ But I never wanted to have any excuses for why I didn’t win. Even though I got hurt, I still believed I was going to make it happen. Believing in yourself is the most important thing to success.”

And Nolf believed he still had enough tools at his disposal to navigate through five matches that March in Cleveland. He began taking inventory of which ones he’d need to shelve and which ones he’d have to double down on to win a second straight national title. 

“I knew exactly where I didn’t want to be,” he said. “I didn’t want to be in any scrambles. I just wanted to keep baseline defense, get to their legs quickly, finish quickly and wrestle on top mainly. I wasn’t trying to score a bunch of takedowns, I was just trying to take them down and turn them because I’m a good top wrestler, too. 

“I didn’t use it a ton in college — riding people out — but when I needed to I could. So that was kind of my game plan — to stay on top and pin ‘em as quickly as possible. But it was harder.”

For the vast majority of his career, Nolf overwhelmed his opponents with pressure, pace and a treasure trove of attacks that helped him compile one of the most decorated resumes in college wrestling history. He went 117-3 with the Nittany Lions, won three NCAA titles, set a Penn State record with 60 pins and scored bonus points in 87.5 percent of his bouts. Those credentials helped make him a finalist for the 157-pound spot on the Flowrestling All-Quarter Century Team presented by Defense Soap.  

Yet for all of Nolf’s incredible feats with the Nittany Lions, one of his most remarkable accomplishments came when he had to scale back his arsenal to accommodate a balky knee that was protected by a bulky brace that stretched from the top of his sock to the bottom of his singlet on his right leg.  

Nolf was riding a 46-match winning streak when he crumpled in pain in a scramble against John Van Brill of Rutgers. It went down as an injury default — the third loss of Nolf’s career — but the bigger issue was what it would mean for his quest to win his second national title. 

Though Nolf said he made noticeable progress each day after he got back on the mat in preparation for the postseason, he estimated he was “probably 50 percent” when the NCAA Championships began. 

“There were just things I couldn’t do,” he said. “I was still able to wrestle 100 percent with my defense and my head positioning and my sprawling, but in terms of my arsenal, I couldn’t do 50 percent of the things (I could normally do). I was 50 percent as fast as I was when I was healthy. There were so many more positions I could’ve put myself in (when I was healthy), but I was able to wrestle 100 percent with my stance and my downblocks and stuff like that.

“Every day I got so much better, but even match to match at NCAAs, I had to go an hour before everybody else to warm up my knee to not have it lock up when I was bending my knee. There was a lot of pain and discomfort that I was dealing with. Match by match at NCAAs I started figuring out how to wrestle with it better and it felt better each match.” 

Nolf held a 14-1 takedown advantage over his five opponents in Cleveland. He outscored them 18-0 in near-fall points and tacked on a riding time point in each of his bouts except the semifinals, when he ended a 16-0 technical fall against Ohio State’s Micah Jordan in the second period with his third turn of the match. 

The Nolf-Martinez Battles

Nolf established himself as one of college wrestling’s future stars during his first year on campus at Penn State when he went 15-1 while wrestling unattached. His lone loss was a 7-4 decision in the finals of the Southern Scuffle against four-time All-American James Green, who later that year won a World bronze medal. During that same tournament, Nolf knocked off Cornell’s Brian Realbuto, the eventual NCAA runner-up that season. 

But while Nolf was entrenching himself as a future title contender, Isaiah Martinez of Illinois was beginning to generate chatter that he might be charting a path to college wrestling history. 

Martinez went 34-0 on his way to the 157-pound national title as a freshman, capped by a 10-2 major decision against Realbuto in the championship bout. His dominance in a senior-laden weight class sparked discussion about the possibility of Martinez going on a four-year undefeated run. 

“The first time I was going to wrestle him I knew he was really tough — he was undefeated at that point — and I remember being in the locker room before our team went out to start the dual and being really excited to have that opportunity because I was a freshman, I didn’t really have anything to lose, but I always loved competing against the best guys in the world,” Nolf said. “Those were my favorite matches.”

Martinez won the first 61 matches of his college career, but that unbeaten run came to an abrupt end in January of 2016. Nolf was leading 5-3 late in the second period when he put the returning NCAA champ on his back in a scramble and scored the fall. 

It turned out to be the lone regular-season loss of Martinez’s career. 

“One of his biggest strengths was his actual strength,” Nolf said. “It seemed like he was stronger than me and we’d get into different scrambles and that was one of his biggest strengths — his power and his athleticism. He did some things that were more unorthodox, but he kinda got away with it because he was so explosive and strong. He was always a good competitor, a good guy, a fun guy to compete against.” 

Martinez evened the series in the 2016 Big Ten finals, handing Nolf his first career loss by virtue of a riding time advantage in a 3-3 tiebreaker decision. They met again two weeks later in the NCAA finals, where they traded first-period takedowns and were tied until the closing seconds when Martinez used an underhook to run around Nolf for the winning score in a 6-5 decision. 

“They were always tight matches,” Nolf said. “It came down to a rideout in the Big Tens and it came down to me resting my hand in the wrong position in the NCAA finals.” 

That rivalry only lasted one season at the college level. Martinez moved up the following year to 165, where he won a pair of Big Ten titles and finished second twice at the national tournament. Meanwhile, Nolf went on to win three more NCAA titles at 157, where his lone loss in those three seasons came via injury default against Van Brill. 

The Results Are In 

The Flowrestling team started with every NCAA champion from the last 25 years and pared the list down to four at every weight after tabulating the results of a staff vote. We let wrestling fans weigh in with a social media vote, and the results are in at 157 pounds.

1. Penn State’s Jason Nolf 

2. Illinois’ Isaiah Martinez  

3. Iowa’s T.J. Williams 

4. Michigan’s Ryan Bertin 

The First-Teamers

125 — Iowa’s Spencer Lee

133 — Ohio State’s Logan Stieber

141 — Cornell’s Yianni Diakomihalis 

149 — Penn State’s Zain Retherford 

157 — Penn State’s Jason Nolf 

Facts, Figures And Those Who Missed The Final Cut At 157

— The last quarter century has produced 20 different NCAA champions at 157 pounds. 

— There were only three multi-time champs at the weight during that 25-year stretch — Bertin, Martinez and Nolf. 

— Earlier this week we broke down the volatility at the top of the 157-pound weight class since 2001.

— Fifteen different schools won a 157-pound NCAA title during the last 25 years, led by Penn State’s four. Cornell, Illinois, Iowa, Iowa State, Michigan and Nebraska each won a pair of titles. 

— Penn State led the field with seven finals appearances at 157 during the last 25 years. Illinois and Nebraska were tied for second with five each, followed by Iowa with four. 

— Seniors collected nine of the 24 titles at 157 pounds since 2001. Juniors and sophomores were tied for second with seven. Martinez was the only freshman to win a 157-pound title in the last quarter century.