For wrestling to grow as a sport, it needs guys like Penn State commit Landon Sidun.
There’s a lot of wrestlers that win consistently, and the best of the best end up winning national championships.
But not all of them have the ability to win championships and do so while exciting fans with the way they win.
Sidun has been that type of wrestler at the high school level, and his goal is to bring that to Happy Valley.
“I like to bring it,” Sidun told Nittany Sports Now exclusively. “I’m going to be excited. I like to go out there and score points. The boring matches, they’re not fun. Wrestling’s fun when you’re scoring points.”
A WRESTLING JUNKIE
For some athletes, it takes a while for people to realize they’re going to be great.
David Robinson didn’t start playing basketball until his senior year of high school and ended up becoming a Hall of Famer.
Kurt Warner didn’t start an NFL game until he was 28, and ended up enshrined in Canton.
But when Sidun’s high school coach at Norwin, Kyle Martin, first saw him in the sixth grade, he knew he had something.
“You saw a different mentality,” Sidun said, “a different approach to the sport and just how he was coachable right from the get-go.”
“And you have to love it that much to be able to compete at the Big Ten level,” he said. “Because it’s a bear. Wrestling is a bear of a sport. If you don’t love it, you’re not going to find that Big Ten level of success. So I think immediately, getting to know Landon just as a human being outside of the wrestling stuff, he was going to be able to accomplish whatever he wanted to.”
Through most of Sidun’s first two seasons, he accomplished whatever he wanted to.
He finished his freshman year 42-2 and won a state championship at 114 pounds.
He was well on his way to defending his title last season.
Then, he broke his hand in February, thus ending those dreams.
“I would lie to you if I said it didn’t sting,” Sidun said. “It did.
It would have been hard to blame Sidun for sulking, but that’s not what he chose to do.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.“I was still out in the practice room every day, helping out as I could,” he said. “Just getting them prepared, ready to go. I was still around the sport. I was always working out still. I was doing what I could. It sucked not being able to wrestle, but I still found my way around it. But when you’re injured and (having to) watch it, it really feeds the fire, like just how much you really need this. It wasn’t like a love at this point. I felt like I needed to come back and wrestle.”
In an effort to minimize further damage, doctors put Sidun in a soft cast initially.
But Sidun’s love of the sport made this difficult.
“He didn’t handle that well,” Martin said. “So they actually had to take him back in and put a hard cast on. Because the first time that he got back in the room, he’s starting to grab guys, he’s starting to grab weights and all this stuff.”
“Keeping him off the mat and away from wrestling at that time was incredibly difficult. But (we) got through it.”
BACK WITH AUTHORITY
Sidun competed for the first time in months at Who’s Number One a few weeks ago and majored Oklahoma State commit Rocklin Zinklin 13-4.
So while there’s still work to be done, but Sidun seems more than ready to win a third state title, and first since committing to Penn State wrestling.
When asked what Sidun can improve on, Martin had a hard time pinpointing something.
“I don’t know,” he said. “He’s solid in every position. He works hard in every position. He loves everything about the training aspects of it. He loves the chess game in a match.”
“He’s incredibly well-rounded,” he said. “I think the pressure’s on the coaching staff here over the next two years to get him to where he’s easily making like a seamless transition into the college style.
Martin also said Sidun has been doing college-style training.
“He’s training with real high-level wrestlers,” he said. “So, I think we just keep trying to polish him, because he’s going to be the wrestler that he is and he’s incredible at it. Just with how he approaches the sport, it’s going to be just kind of a week-by-week, where we can see a little adjustments here, where we can maybe make a little jump at a certain teqhnique, at a certain position as we go. So it’s kind of exciting, but it’s good pressure that he puts on people around him.”
So what is Penn State wrestling getting in Landon Sidun?
“You’re getting a really exciting wrestler that isn’t afraid of taking risks in a match and scoring points,” Martin said. “But even more than that, they’re going to fall in love with the type of human being he is. It far surpasses wrestling. His character is unmatched. The type of teammate he is, the type of brother, son that he is, grandson that he is, they’re getting a great human being. He’s phenominal at wrestling, but they’re going to fall in llove with the human being that he is.
“You guys are going to like my wrestling style… I’m going to be the guy that’s ready to go on Gameday, too,” Sidun said. “So it’s going to be exciting. Just gonna love it.”
