With last June’s hiring of Jason Nickal as head wrestling coach, it seemed to me that State College Area High School had staked a claim to future mat transcendence.
Sure, I know it’s dangerous to predict the future even with a stalwart leader like Nickal. There’s a reason why Wall Street firms monotonously say, “Past performance is not indicative of future results.”
But by snagging Nickal as the new Little Lion coach, State High got as close as possible to a sure thing. That’s why the announcement of Nickal’s hiring created a buzz like the one that followed Cael Sanderson’s selection by Penn State in 2009. And that’s why Chris Weakland, State College’s athletic director, describes his own feeling by saying, “I felt like we hit the lottery.”
Nickal is not only the father and personal mentor for Bo Nickal, a three-time NCAA champion for Penn State and rising star in UFC, but he is highly respected for developing championship teams at high schools in Colorado, Wyoming, Texas, New Mexico and Kentucky.
With a 5-4 dual meet record recently finalized for his first State High season, Jason Nickal can’t yet claim any remarkable results in Happy Valley. But dynasties aren’t built in a year, and Sanderson’s first Nittany Lion team posted a ho-hum dual meet record of 13-6-1.
What will happen in the future? That was the question in my mind when I recently spent two hours with Jason and his wife, Sandy. The conversation was fascinating to me as we skimmed several decades of Nickal adventures. But it started with a contemporary shocker: the couple’s account of their Spring Creek cold plunge the day before. (“It was awesome,” said Sandy.)
Although I still haven’t decided if jumping into Spring Creek in February is laudable or ludicrous, I’m sure it’s remarkable. And if it takes remarkable people to achieve remarkable results, State High wrestling is headed for an exciting future.
HOW IT CAME TO BE
Ryan Cummins, a former Penn State wrestling captain, served as State High’s coach from 2013-14 to 2023-24. According to Weakland, “he did a phenomenal job” in providing stability for a program that had endured 0-5 dual meet records in both 2011-12 and 2012-13. But after 11 years on the job with a 73-89 dual meet record in the tough Mid-Penn Conference, Cummins felt he should devote more attention to his family, including two young boys in the State College youth wrestling program.
The Nickals, meanwhile, had come to State College in the fall of 2023, arriving here in time to help Bo and his wife, Maddie, to care for their infant son, Ace, who was born in December of that year. Although the senior Nickals didn’t plan to reside permanently in Happy Valley (they spent their first 11 months here in a 5th-wheel trailer at Seven Mountains Campground) Jason volunteered to serve as a Little Lion assistant coach.
When State High’s head coaching position came open, those in the know wondered if Jason would apply. Perhaps not, since he was loving his semi-retired life as a grandfather, as an assistant coach and as the wrestling category manager for BSN Sports.
But Jason did apply for the State High job, school officials did say yes and wrestling fans did raise their eyebrows. Notes Weakland, “I was at a meeting this past fall and an unnamed Mid Penn athletic director said, ‘You’re going to get a lot of kids transferring to State College because of this.’ He wasn’t accusing us of recruiting; he just knew the statewide and national scene and he knew (Jason) is going to attract a lot of attention.”
TEACHERS ON THE MOVE
As they shared the early years of their story, I noted that the Nickals moved frequently after getting married on Aug. 5, 1995. As their family grew, this pair of schoolteachers sought out educational or athletic opportunities for their children. So after starting out in Rifle, Colorado (Sandy’s home area), they moved on to Torrington, Wyoming (Jason’s hometown) and then to Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
Then, after achieving wrestling success in New Mexico and with Bo emerging as a star among rising ninth graders, Jason was pursued by such wrestling juggernauts as Iowa City West High School (near the University of Iowa), Blair Academy (New Jersey), Wyoming Seminary (northeast PA) and Wasatch High School (Sanderson’s alma mater in Utah).
But the Nickals declined those opportunities and chose Allen, Texas, a northern suburb of Dallas. Both Jason and Sandy secured faculty positions with good pay and Sandy was happy to coach girls’ basketball. Jason, however, was only going to teach science; he was not going to coach wrestling. Why not?
“Wrestling controlled my life as a person, as a coach and as a dad who was trying to develop his son into a wrestler,” says Jason. “And I felt like I had devoted too much of my time and energy towards that. I wasn’t spending enough time taking care of my wife and my three daughters. And it hit me really hard.”
But after the Nickals settled in Texas, the head wrestling coach invited Jason to take a flexible role as an assistant coach. He promised that Jason wouldn’t need to attend every practice and that he could always attend soccer or basketball games that involved his three daughters.
“And so,” says Jason, “I got right back into coaching. But my perspective had changed because I wasn’t the head guy any more. The awareness that I wasn’t spending quality time with my daughters or my wife was life-changing for me. I got the best of both. I still got to coach Bo.”
Meanwhile, the Nickal girls also thrived and today Jordan is finishing chiropractic school at Parker University in Dallas; Lexi is a marketing professional for Fort Lauderdale United F.C., a women’s professional soccer team; and Shelby is playing professional soccer in Australia.
BO, CAEL AND A WHEATIES BOX
From a fan’s perspective, the Nickal family connection to local wrestling began when Bo chose to wrestle for Penn State. But according to Jason, the tie was foreshadowed years earlier.
“Going way back,” says Jason, “we followed wrestling very closely at all levels—high school, college, international, everything. One year when Bo was about 8, I asked him if he wanted to go with me to the U.S. Nationals in Las Vegas. He said, ‘Yeah, Dad, and I’m going to bring this.’ So he grabs his Wheaties box that had a picture of Cael on it, and he says, ‘I’m going to get it signed.’
“I said, ‘No, you don’t want to haul that to Las Vegas. Chances are you’re not going to get the opportunity for Cael to sign it.’
“But we flew to Las Vegas, landing at something like midnight or 1 a.m. We go to the luggage carousel, and Bo’s holding his Wheaties box. You’ll never believe who’s standing there at the carousel—Cael Sanderson, and he’s the only other person there. So Bo got Cael to sign the box, and that made his entire trip. For me it was, ‘Wow, that was a God move.’ What were the odds we’d see Cael in our first 20 minutes in Las Vegas? I’m sure Sandy was praying about that.”
WAITING FOR PENN STATE
About 10 years after the signing of the Wheaties box, Bo was being recruited by top collegiate wrestling programs. And for good reason. Not only had he won three Texas state championships, but he captured USA Wrestling’s Triple Crown (folkstyle, freestyle and Greco Roman national titles in the same year) and placed fifth at the 2013 U17 Freestyle World Championships.
Powerful teams like Oklahoma State, Iowa and Ohio State came calling—but for some reason, Penn State hadn’t reached out. According to Jason, “Bo was holding out (for Penn State) because, of course, Cael was his favorite.
“Finally, Penn State reached out with some interest but not to the extent of other schools. The other schools were like, ‘If you come here; you’re not going to have to pay for anything.’
“Penn State was our last visit, and as we were driving away from State College, Bo said, ‘Dad, I think I know where I want to go to school. If I want to be the best wrestler that I can be, the only place where that’s going to happen is Penn State.’
“And I said, ‘Well, OK. We’ve got some figuring out to do because they’re the only ones that haven’t offered you a full ride. Your parents are teachers, and it’s about $40,000 out-of-state tuition per year.’ So he committed to Penn State. They did 50% for year one, and then he didn’t have to worry about it for the rest of his career.”
TRAUMA FOR MAMA?
So how did all this rasslin’ look from a mom’s point of view? Sandy knew nothing about the sport until she married Jason, and in fact, she had played basketball at San Diego State and still coaches hoops (including this year’s ninth grade girls team at State High).
Some moms are fearful that their sons might be seriously injured. Others fret that little Johnny might suffer inner angst from defeat. Not Sandy. She loved this new sport from the get-go and even engaged in some women’s competition. In fact, her knowledge grew so quickly that Jason confidently installed her as the junior high boys’ coach when he was the varsity coach in Torrington, Wyoming.
Why was Sandy so well-suited to be a wrestling coach’s wife and a wrestler’s mother? Maybe because she grew up on a 500-acre ranch in Colorado where no job was too hard and no chore was beneath one’s dignity. Maybe because her sport of basketball is actually much rougher than most people realize. Or maybe because she’s been blessed with a powerful faith that says God means business when he claims to take care of his children.
“Honestly,” says Sandy, “we were pretty poor when I was growing up. But it was always instilled in us that God’s going to provide. So just trust, believe and have peace. There was never any doubt about God. The way I grew up—of course he’s there.”
GONE WITH THE WIND?
Jason nods his support for Sandy’s words. “There’s been so many occasions where we lost something of value—a wallet, some jewelry, whatever—and she’d say, ‘Let’s just pray about it.’ I could probably think of a dozen times where we’ve done that and God has taken us to whatever we were looking for.”
And then, fittingly enough, Jason mentions a missing bracket. It was just an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper, but it had inestimable value to Bo. The family was in Casper, Wyoming for the state’s junior wrestling tournament and Bo, just 7 years old, had won his first state championship. Of course, the tournament officials had presented the bracket sheet to a very excited Bo Nickal as a token of his triumph.
However, according to Jason, Casper is “one of the windiest places on the planet.” And when the family drove to the local mall to get dinner, both sliding doors were opened simultaneously. “The wind gushes through like crazy,” recalls Jason, “and it carries the bracket up 100 or 200 feet in the air, all the way over the mall.
“Bo is devastated because he just won his first state title and the bracket is a big deal. He was upset; I was upset. And Sandy says, ‘Let’s just pray about it and we’ll go look for it.’
‘So we pray, but we’re like, ‘We’re not going to find it.’ So then we get back in the van and drive to the back side of the mall. There’s a 10-foot chain link fence that runs along the boundary of the mall. Up a hill about 50 or 60 yards, guess what we see. This piece of paper is plastered against the fence, stuck there. It’s his bracket. And now everybody’s going nuts and cheering. We still have that bracket to this day. Sandy’s had that faith when the rest of us have not.”
MYLES & MYLES
Whether talking about Bo’s heroics or discussing the future at State High, neither Nickal seems totally consumed by the glory of it all. Says Jason, “For me, it’s about the journey—from where you start to where you finish. If you follow Bo’s career and our lives, the experiences we’ve had, the people we’ve met and the places we’ve lived…it’s been an incredible journey.”
At this point, it was inevitable that our conversation touched on two matches between Bo and Ohio State’s Myles Martin. Not just because those matches took place on big stages, but also because they were pivotal in the family’s narrative.
The first big bout took place in 2016 in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Nickal, just a freshman, was in position to claim an NCAA title by beating Martin, a foe who had lost to him three times that season. But when Bo moved from an underhook to a far knee pick, Martin countered and threw him to his back for a reversal and near fall. The top-seeded Lion could not recover from that six-point move and lost, 11-9.
“He had put everything he had into being the very best wrestler that he could be,” says Jason. “As a redshirt freshman he makes the NCAA finals and wants to be a four-time NCAA champion like his coach. He gets to the finals and loses to an opponent he had pinned two weeks prior in the Big Ten Championships. It was totally devastating to him, and it affected him for days, weeks, months. He had to identify that wrestling is what he does; it’s not who he is. And once he could separate those two things, he became a better human being and a better wrestler.”
In 2017, Nickal went up a weight class to 184 pounds and defeated two-time champion Gabe Dean in the NCAA finals. But that wasn’t quite as dramatic as the 2018 final when Nickal met Myles Martin again.
“Not only is this a rematch of the NCAA final that he lost,” notes Jason, “but Penn State needed Bo to win in order to beat Ohio State for the team title. If Myles Martin wins, Ohio State wins. And it’s being televised to millions of people on ESPN. So Bo’s getting ready for the match and Cael looks at him and says, ‘Bo, there’s no other person I’d rather have step on the mat right now than you.’ So he goes out and does an amazing thing—he pins Myles Martin in the first period, wins the NCAA title and clinches the team title.”
PHILOSOPHY & GOALS
So what can local fans expect to see from the Jason Nickal era of Little Lion wrestling? First, he’ll make sure his wrestlers have fun.
“Wrestling’s hard enough,” he says, “so you don’t need a coach to make it even harder on you. And if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, then you’re never going to be as good as you possibly can be.”
Second, Nickal will continually stress the fundamentals of the sport. His father, Gary, was his high school coach, and Gary always kept his daily practice plans to make sure nothing critical was left out. Today, Jason still consults his own practice plans from 26 years ago, and of course, they begin with the fundamentals.
Thirdly, Nickal says, “I emphasize the mental part of wrestling, the self-confidence, the ability to wrestle freely without any hesitation.”
What does he hope to accomplish? “I want our team to be respected as one of the top programs in Pennsylvania. I want people to say, ‘That State College team—when they come into our gym, you’ve got to watch out. They’re good kids, they’re tough kids and they wrestle hard.’”
