STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — David Taylor knew he needed to let Kyle Dake in on a significant development this past spring.
Shortly after Taylor’s own competitive wrestling career ended abruptly with a loss at the U.S. Olympic wrestling trials in April, Oklahoma State brass was ready to fly to State College to interview him for their vacant head coaching position. Taylor knew going into the trials that another four-year training cycle wasn’t in his plans. What he didn’t fully grasp that night when he slipped out the back door of Penn State’s Bryce Jordan Center and into this new reality was what he’d do next.
In what would become the most significant coaching change in the sport since Cael Sanderson was hired at Penn State in 2009, Oklahoma State was ready to put the full-court press on Taylor, and he was ready to listen.
“As soon as I got called for an interview, I called Kyle and asked him what he thought and got his perspective,” Taylor said.
Dake, the four-time world champion and 2020 Olympic bronze medalist, has a longtime friendship with Taylor. It’s since extended to a business partnership, too. Once wrestling rivals, Dake moved from Ithaca, New York, to State College in 2022 to train in the same room as Taylor and the rest of the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club. They’d raise their kids together here while chasing their own wrestling dreams.
“With any decision, you have pros and cons, and we talked through those things,” Taylor continued. “The decision to take the job was a pretty time-pressing matter, so it wasn’t like we got to sit down and have lengthy conversations, but I tried to talk to him the best that we could.”
There they were, two of the most prolific American wrestlers of all time, now trying to figure out how their wellness club in State College, the venture they spent the last 15 months planning and years longer thinking about during road trips, could get off the ground with Dake gearing up to compete in the Olympics and Taylor zig-zagging the country after accepting one of the most coveted head coaching jobs in wrestling.
The same guys who in high school used to dream about careers in the sport are now both 33 with six NCAA individual titles, seven world championships and an Olympic gold and bronze medal among them. They swear it wasn’t all that long ago when they shared carefree summer days in which a teenaged Dake would do gainers off a 20-foot cliff into the water below while Taylor, the coveted high school wrestling prospect, was nervous just looking below.
David Taylor won gold in the 86 kg division at the Tokyo Olympics. Now, he’s serving as friend and mentor to Kyle Dake. (Jack Guez / AFP via Getty Images)
In early May, the two had no choice but to dive in as they approached their own career crossroads with the sport that first brought them together. Taylor would be introduced as Oklahoma State’s head coach on May 10 and has worked since then to try and tie up loose ends both with other business ventures and also with the friends and colleagues he left behind.
“There were a lot of tough conversations,” Taylor said. “When I did accept the job, I wasn’t able to call all the people I wish I could’ve called before the news hit, but things move quick. It’s one of the highest-profile jobs in wrestling. … There’s a pretty large ripple effect with the decision that I made.”
Taylor and Dake have worked together from afar to open their business in State College, all while Dake, the top-seeded freestyle wrestler at 74 kg, has his sights set on Olympic gold this August in Paris, where competition in his weight class begins Friday.
“It’s almost like a grieving process in a lot of ways,” Dake said of Taylor’s departure. “It’s like, man, I just lost a guy that I talk to every day because he has other priorities now and he has other things he’s doing. … The proximity is just different now.”
In an alternate universe, one that seemed realistic until the final seconds of what would be Taylor’s last match at the Trials, both would be getting ready to head to Paris. Like so many of the parallels of their wrestling careers — winning their first world championship together in Budapest in 2018, each securing a medal in Tokyo in 2021 — they’d do this one together, too.
Maybe they’d head off into the sunset afterward. At the very least, they’d prolong whatever decisions had to come next. Both still say their bodies feel better now than they did in their early 20s. Dake says he’s 50-50 on training for the Olympics in 2028. The idea of competing in Los Angeles could make another training cycle a little more appealing, he said.
In the ideal setting, Taylor and Dake’s spouses and parents, who supported them from the start, and their own kids would all be there with them in Paris, too. In Dake’s mind, that’s how this was always supposed to be.
Instead, Dake, seated outside Penn State’s wrestling facility this summer, spoke openly about how he’s still trying to process what life looks like without his father, Doug, who died in April. Kyle fills pages of his journal with reflections about his dad. He’s always found it healthy to get his thoughts down on paper, whether it be the individual goals he’d scribbled out in ink in college, or now to share what he’s feeling. He talks about Doug with his wife, coaches and friends, too.
From late December to April, as Doug’s health deteriorated, Kyle would go back and forth between State College and Ithaca, New York, trying to spend as much time with his dad as he could. He’d train at Cornell when he needed to, being welcomed back to the place where he first trained for the senior level. At the hospital, father and son would talk like they always did about how wrestling practice went and who Kyle wrestled with that day.
“We were able to talk about pretty much everything,” Dake said. “He was like, ‘We’ve been doing this wrestling thing together for 30 years, so let’s keep it going.’ You got something to accomplish, so now go do it. I thought we would have had more time, but it just happened the way it happened. My perspective is that everything happens for a reason and in perfect timing. So that was his time that he needed to let go. I was hoping that he would live forever.”
Nine days after Doug’s death, Kyle had to try and compartmentalize and take the mat at the Olympic trials. Tears flowed, the pain and emotion still so raw after his arm was raised.
“I was just trying to be there for him any way that I could,” Taylor said. “I don’t think we talked anything about wrestling. When we talked then it was just about him and how he’s doing. I started telling him, ‘There’s nothing more that your dad would want than for you to go out and win the Olympics this year.’”
In the months since the trials, Dake said he’s tried to heed the same advice he tells his kids when they bring up how much they miss their grandpa: Let the emotion flow, and let it go. On this particular afternoon, Father’s Day is approaching. Dake takes a second to stop and observe a cardinal — Doug’s favorite bird — as it lands on a tree branch nearby. Kyle has recently gone back and watched a video clip of him and his dad from 2018. It was the last time both would be together in their wrestling stance.
Dake has had a filmmaker following his career since his days at Cornell, where in 2013 he became the first wrestler in NCAA history to win four NCAA titles in four different weight classes. He beat Taylor, 5-4, to secure his fourth NCAA title. While Dake is excited for the project to one day end up on the right platform and for fans to see it, he’s grateful to have little moments with his dad documented forever.
“I’m thankful for everything that has happened, but understanding the reason why it’s happened, I don’t know that I’ll get that,” Dake said. “It’s just a factor of time, I think. … There’s times when you get sucked into an emotion like, man, I really miss him. I really wish I could talk to him, call him.”
Cornell’s Kyle Dake and Penn State’s David Taylor wrestle during the 2013 NCAA championships. (Matthew Holst / Getty Images)
As Taylor and Dake readied to open the doors to their wellness club this July, in a way it was like old times again. Taylor flew out to Colorado Springs to wrestle and hang out with Dake for a couple days in July. Later in the month, Taylor was back in State College, working the register and cleaning dishes at K2 Roots, the business he and his wife own that’s now connected to the wellness club. Dake was giving tours of the facility while Taylor said he sensed some surprised looks from customers that he was back in town.
Oklahoma is his home now, but like the wellness club and the M2 Training Center that Taylor opened here and that will continue operating, Taylor’s impact on the wrestling community here won’t completely disappear.
No, this wasn’t how Taylor envisioned his summer unfolding just a few months ago. Now, he’ll remain busy at Oklahoma State building his own program while being sure to watch from afar as Dake tries and fulfills his own Olympic dream.
“Kyle’s mind is fresh and he’s hungry,” Taylor said. “It’s something that’s been driving him for a long time. … I keep telling him, ‘Man, I just want you to win in Paris.’”
(Top photo of Kyle Dake during the 2023 senior world championships: Kadir Caliskan – United World Wrestling / Getty Images)
