Snacks

This week's Snacks come from Dalton Jensen: 2X Iowa High School State Champion. In college, he wrestled at Iowa State, where he was an NCAA DI National Qualifier, and then at Nebraska Kearney, where he became a 2X NCAA DII All-American and NCAA DII National Champion. He is currently the Head Coach at the University of Nebraska Kearney, where he has led the team to two NCAA DII National Team Championships (2022 and 2025) since taking over the program.

Below are some excerpts from our conversation, along with key takeaways and tips that can be applied to improve yourself as a Coach, Athlete, or wrestling Parent.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Origin Story Tip: Specializing in wrestling is common—and often necessary—to reach the highest levels of the sport. However, don’t rush to drop other sports too early. Playing multiple sports during childhood supports overall athletic development. Healthy specialization typically begins around high school, but it ultimately depends on the individual athlete’s motivation and passion for the sport.

"I had very supportive parents. I had two older brothers—I was the youngest. Both my older brothers wrestled. My dad wrestled in high school, was a state placer in Nebraska, and went on to wrestle one year in college, where he was a national qualifier. Then he dropped out of school and started a business.

My parents had a small business in my hometown, so they had a little flexibility to support me and my brothers and take us to wrestling tournaments. I grew up in a wrestling gym, going around watching my brothers compete. By the time I was four, I was interested in the sport and started going to some practices.

When I was four or five, they sent me to a couple of tournaments just to get my feet wet and see how I liked it. By the time I was in second or third grade, I was definitely training more consistently at a club level and going to tournaments. From about third grade on, I was having pretty natural success in the sport.

Through the youth level—third through eighth grade—I had a lot of success at AAU state tournaments and some national tournaments as well. My family continued to support me, and I started taking things more seriously around eighth grade or my freshman year.

I began training year-round and dropped the other sports I was participating in because I was just super passionate about wrestling. It was my future. It was all I thought about. I wanted to be the best I could be...

I think the last sport I was hanging on to at that point was probably soccer. It was a springtime sport, but once I started doing freestyle and Greco in the spring, that became my focus.

I began competing year-round—going to Fargo and entering every tournament I possibly could, as long as my parents could take me. I also used the offseason to train at a local club.

Even though I was from a small town in Iowa, I was only 20 or 30 minutes outside of Omaha, Nebraska. That gave me a lot of opportunities with different clubs and different workout partners to continue training and improving...

So I started wrestling full time, had a pretty successful high school career, and was able to earn the opportunity to wrestle in college."

Parent Tip: It’s natural to want to protect your child from discomfort—but don’t remove the struggle. Facing challenges early helps them build resilience, independence, problem-solving skills, and emotional toughness. Shield them too much while they’re young, and they may be unprepared for the real-life adversity that comes later.

"Don't remove the struggle... You could go into a very in-depth look at this from a societal perspective. We're obviously pretty far removed from a significant war, the draft, or anything like that—things our parents or grandparents may have had to go through.

So now we’re in a scenario where youth is going through relatively easy times. I think about this with my two-year-old son. How am I supposed to provide struggle for my kid when he’s going to grow up with a lot of privilege? He has two parents with good jobs—we’re hardworking—and he’ll have access to pretty much whatever he wants.

That’s something I think about, especially as I coach 40 kids a year. I get to see how these kids come in at 18 years old from all different backgrounds—socioeconomic, geographic, broken homes, intact families. Honestly, some of the ones I see struggle the most are the ones who grew up in very privileged homes with both parents and an upper-middle-class lifestyle.

College wrestling is hard. Moving off on your own for the first time is hard. Kids who never had to face struggle growing up haven’t learned how to troubleshoot or cope with adversity. On the flip side, I see kids from rougher backgrounds or broken homes, and when they get here, they see this as a privilege, a great opportunity, even an escape from their previous reality.

They’ve already experienced struggle and learned from it, so this is just all a blessing to them. The biggest thing is that I think parents—again, not out of malice, not out of bad intentions—too often remove the struggle. We don’t let kids go through the hardships themselves or learn coping skills.

If they don’t go through that in the first 18 years, they’re going to be really ill-equipped by the time they get to college. Because they will go through struggle—and they need to know how to handle it."

Coaching Tip: Build a diverse coaching staff that offers athletes multiple perspectives. Some athletes respond best to calm encouragement, others to firm direction. Exposure to different coaching personalities can help them grow from all angles.

"It's the same thing with how I build my coaching staff. I want us to all have different characteristics and areas of strength and weaknesses. I'm kind of quiet and reserved. I have an assistant coach who's a little more vocal and harsh—in a positive way.

You respond differently to different things. At the end of the day, I think you need to be exposed to all sides of it. You're learning from all different angles. I've had bad coaches, good coaches, harsh coaches, and nice coaches.

I was exposed to a lot, especially once I started dividing my time into freestyle and Greco as well. Wrestling year-round, I got to see a lot of different good coaches. Even thinking about my college career specifically—it’s not a college experience I would probably write up for everybody or wish on everybody.

But I had three different head coaches during my five years in college. I wanted to end up being a college head coach, so for me, I couldn’t have had a better experience in that sense because I got to learn from three different people.

Two of them were Olympic champs—Kevin Jackson and Cael Sanderson. Then I transferred to UNK and had Mark Bauer, who is a three-time Division 2 NCAA Coach and Hall of Famer. So I got to learn from three different college coaches.

That was huge for me, especially at the age I was at—where I was starting to think beyond college and about my professional career. I was taking a lot of notes and hanging on to different dialogue or teaching packages they gave us.

I thought that was a really good and unique experience. The biggest thing I probably took away from coaches—and this goes back to the parent conversation—is that I can't take these guys to the promised land. They're the ones driving their career.

They're the ones putting in the work. I'm really just an outlet. I'm a resource. I'm a guide. You can't coach drive. I don't think you can. These kids have to be intrinsically motivated.

So I'm just a resource and a cheerleader, here to support them along the way. My job is to find out what makes these guys tick, to enhance their performance, and get them to perform at their best on competition day.

I'm here to help them cope with performance anxiety and such. Finding out what makes them tick—that's usually not about skill or technique. A lot of it's mental.

This sport probably exposes that more than others. Maybe I'm naive, but I think it does more than most sports. Because of the one-on-one factor, being a combat sport, you're more vulnerable and exposed than you would be in any other sport.

That mental challenge these guys face is huge. As a college coach, I find myself helping these guys get through or figure that out more than I work on technique or skill."

Athlete Tip: Success doesn’t come from just taking advice—it comes from applying it, reflecting on your performance, and figuring things out for yourself. Use your teammates and coaches as resources, but ultimately, growth happens when you take ownership of your development and make real-time adjustments.

"I get a lot of my college kids who want the answers to be successful, and they want me to give it to them. They think they're going to take that with them and go out on the mat, and it's just going to equate to success right away.

Some of the biggest jumps I made in my wrestling career, and the adjustments and learning—it was internal. It was stuff I had to figure out myself. When I say figure out myself, it was by using the resources around me.

Yes, they were my coaches and my teammates. I always say to our guys, your number one resource is each other. You’re sharpening each other each day, and you’re going to learn more from your teammates than you are from me.

So use all those resources around you to better yourself. Understand that a lot of those battles—whether it's skill, technique, or performance anxiety—are going to be things you figure out on your own.

I challenge our guys to get in their own heads on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis and troubleshoot their problems. Maybe they go to an open tournament and need to reflect on it afterward—what they did well, what they did poorly.

We’ve got another open tournament next weekend. What adjustments can I make? Some of those adjustments need to happen quicker. On the same day of a tournament, you might need to make changes from one match to the next.

Within a match, you have to adjust mid-match. If a period doesn’t go your way, you have to adjust within the hand fight. In wrestling, some things don’t allow you a week—they’re second-by-second decisions.

You have to trust and rely on yourself to get through that. I ask our guys to think a lot and to challenge themselves. I was always very intrinsically motivated, and I had such a high passion for wrestling.

It was almost to the point where I was overthinking. I’d go to bed thinking about wrestling, thinking about performance, and what I needed to be doing. I’d wake up with the same thoughts.

On the bigger picture of college coaching, we want to help these guys become better men. Becoming a better wrestler is just a byproduct of that.

When you talk about discipline, sacrifice, selflessness, and competing for something bigger than yourself—those things require you to be a good man. Becoming a good wrestler is just a byproduct of that."

Negative Impact Tip: When your entire identity is wrapped up in being a wrestler, it can leave you lost when the sport ends. Over-identifying with your athletic role can lead to a toxic relationship with the sport and create a tough transition into life after competition. Stay grounded by developing other parts of who you are outside of wrestling.

"You said it—this sport, like any sport, can lead to a toxic relationship. It can definitely impact you. Wrestling is unique because you need to be part of a team and be selfless, helping those around you. But at the same time, you need to have a little bit of a selfish attitude to take care of yourself and do what you need to do to maximize your performance.

I think there are a lot of qualities wrestlers have that make them successful in their careers and in life. Maybe that selfishness—when taken too far—can have a negative impact on their professional career and life. Not getting your identity too wrapped up in it is important.

The guys who have their identity wrapped up in being a wrestler—some of them are the better athletes, the ones who’ve been wrestling since they were four years old, and they've had success their whole career. That’s their identity. They live, eat, and breathe it. Those are the guys I worry about when they’re 23 and about to graduate.

Because when wrestling is removed, and their whole identity was wrapped up in it, what’s left? Those are the guys I worry about. I challenge our guys to make sure they're well-rounded.

If they can view their career through a more selfless lens instead of being inward and selfish, that helps. There's that mantra of “get 1% better each day,” but I challenge our guys to get those around them 1% better. You're going to rise with the tide.

Be a resource for your teammates. Hold each other accountable and help each other out so you don’t get so wrapped up in yourself. That selfishness isn’t going to translate, especially after college.

It won’t help them when they graduate and move into the real world if they only thought about themselves and had their identity completely wrapped up in wrestling. If they never balanced themselves out, wrestling will eventually end—at least their competitive career.

I hope they take qualities from this experience that will help them be successful in all aspects of life. I challenge our guys to get involved in other things—clubs, their major, building relationships with professors—things that, at the end of the day, are probably more important than just wrestling."

Wrestling Growth Tip: Success within the sport isn't just about training harder—it's also about building programs that can sustain themselves. Wrestlers and coaches alike should understand the importance of fundraising, community engagement, and institutional relationships. The programs that consistently grow and succeed are often the ones putting in work beyond the mat.

"I mean, when you look at the college level and everything going on at the NCAA with revenue sharing and NIL, a lot of this is driven by football and basketball. Unfortunately, it seems like it's all about the dollar right now. The financial and revenue source piece is obviously alarming because we're just not on the same field as football and basketball as far as being a revenue-producing sport.

Obviously, the popularity—I don't know if we're going to necessarily change that overnight where we're just as popular as those two sports in America. I just don't. That probably will never happen. But we’ve got to find a way to at least be more self-sustainable and produce revenue for college coaches.

They’ve got to be, at a minimum, fundraising and making themselves self-sustainable. That just depends on where they’re at with their institution. For some schools, they might be taken care of completely as far as travel, scholarships, and coaching salaries, and they just need to be fundraising for NIL.

For some smaller schools, they might need to be fundraising for travel budgets, supplemental coaching salaries, or scholarship-based needs. Whatever it is, every little bit helps. Those coaches need to be doing something. They need to be advocating for their sport, going out into the community, and being involved—especially within their institution.

Obviously, there are some programs that are at risk of being cut, and you need to be building those relationships with your university presidents, your chancellors, your deans, and being actively involved in your institution so that you're looked at and viewed in a positive light. I think obviously winning helps, right?

I think it's kind of the chicken and the egg. You wonder—does money drive success, or does success drive the money? Obviously, I think having a successful program costs money. I think about UNK just inside our bubble—wrestling and volleyball are kind of the premier sports here.

They've had the most sustained success over a couple of decades now. Myself—I'm in my 10th year coaching, and my coach, Mark Bauer was the coach for 17 years before me. The volleyball coach has been here for like 20 years. Our two programs, by far, fundraise the most money, and we’re both the most successful.

So I don’t think that’s a coincidence. You could call it a healthy distraction. But me working harder and going out and fundraising money—whether that’s through alumni donations, events, or kids' tournaments—it’s me working harder beyond just coaching. Then I take even more pride and stock in helping our program be successful.

So yeah, I think coaches just need to help our sport be more self-sustainable. Knowing how to run tournaments, knowing how to fundraise, knowing how to make a positive impact within your bubble—and at the college level, that bubble would be your institution."

Growth Bite

This week's Growth Bite comes from an image I saw on Twitter the other day. I can't remember where it came from, but Never Underestimate the Power of Small Habits.

Community Treat

This week's Community Treat comes from the Virginia Tech Wrestling family, as head coach Tony Robie donated his kidney to the father of one of his athletes.