‘No regrets:’ Former Penn State wrestler Frank Molinaro retires at Olympic Trials
It may not have been exactly how he had imagined it, but former Nittany Lion Frank Molinaro got to retire with dignity at the Olympic Team Trials on Friday, leaving his shoes out on the mat and walking off to a standing ovation at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas.
The 2016 Olympian had previously planned to wrestle his final match at his alma mater last year, when the trials were scheduled to be held at the Bryce Jordan Center before they were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Facing the prospect of having to maintain weight and his training regime for another year, Molinaro went on FloWrestling Radio Live to announce his retirement from the sport, before taking an assistant job at Arizona State.
But that’s no way for a four-time All-American, NCAA champ and winner of multiple international tournaments to take his final bow.
“(I) just didn’t want to retire in my basement over COVID,” he said Friday. “That kind of broke my heart a little bit. And I just saw that we had great success at ASU, and after that I thought, let me get down to weight and get out there and compete and retire the way I should. I put way too much effort and work into my training and life to have to just hang up my shoes over COVID in my basement.”
Molinaro went 1-1 at the trials before dropping out at 65 kg. He beat former University of North Carolina wrestler Even Henderson, of Johnstown, 10-1, before falling 10-0 to Cornell’s Yianni Diakomihalis.
Molinaro trailed Diakomihalis 4-0 at the end of the first period. Less than a minute into the second period, Diakomihalis scored two points, then wrapped Molinaro up in a leg lace to rack up four more and end the bout early.
“That leg lace was tight,” Molinaro said. “I can usually get out of a leg lace 99.9% of the time, but that sucker was tight.”
Molinaro is the most recent former Nittany Lion to have competed in the Olympics, finishing just shy of a medal at fifth in Rio de Janeiro. The New Jersey native was an assistant with the Nittany Lions at the time, before leaving in 2017 for a job at Virginia Tech. He left coaching a year later to focus on making the next Olympic team, before landing at Arizona State last year, where he helped guide the Sun Devils to a Pac-12 championship and their first fourth-place NCAA finish since 1995.
The fact that the Tokyo Olympics got pushed back a year to 2021 made all the difference in Molinaro’s decision to retire, he said in his post-match press conference.
“This is a young man’s game,” he said. “It seems to me the Olympic champion and the world champion, the age keeps going down. Kyle Snyder was the youngest Olympic champion in history (in 2016), ... all these Russians are wining Worlds at 20-something years old. I have three kids under six. I’m 32.”
Diakomihalis ended up losing 4-4 on criteria to Jordan Oliver, winner of the 2019 Senior Nationals, in the semifinals. Oliver will face former Ohio State wrestler Joey McKenna, who beat Penn State great Zain Retherford, in the finals on Saturday.
While Molinaro would have liked to have been in that position on Saturday, he said he’s still satisfied with how his career played out.
“(I’m) just a little bummed,” Molinaro said. “I could’ve probably wrestled a little bit better, but outside of that, I put a lot of work into just giving myself a chance to compete here, so I’m happy with my career. I reached all my goals, no regrets. I’m kind of relaxed now — maybe, we’ll see.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2021 at 8:30 AM.
