Ev Dog Blog Travelogue: The 2026 Big Ten Wrestling Championships
On March 7th 2026, my father and I ventured to Penn State for a weekend where we hoped to celebrate our alma mater’s tenth conference tournament wrestling title. We were overjoyed as the three-time reigning conference tournament champions were easily favored to defend their crown. On top of getting to watch a powerhouse wrestling dynasty exhibit their strength as a program, our excitement was galvanized by the fact that neither of us had ever attended a conference championship for any sport. However, with four lengthy sessions spanning across two days, my father made the executive decision to skip the morning sessions to avoid becoming burnt out with wrestling by the end of our first day and to also let us explore a college town that molded us: State College, PA.
Penn State fans have been privileged getting to cheer on talents like Hen Ruth back in the early 2010s.
Journey to and Walking Around State College
Like any of our other father-son voyages to Penn State, some Sirius XM Dad Rock-oriented station roared through the interior of my father’s CRV as we traveled north on Route 22. We eagerly discussed the weekend’s premier event and its early results from the first session. The mood suddenly shifted as a dense fog rolled in near the top of the Seven Mountains and shrouded the road ahead of us. Our vision reduced to eight feet and our focus shifted to the navy sedan ahead of us. Our lives were at the mercy of its taillights. I turned down the volume of Led Zeppelin’s “Misty Mountain Hop”, an aptly-titled track for that moment, to augment my father’s concentration. The music may have been silenced, but as we rounded a tight curve, I could hear my dad’s heart drumming a beat that would have made John Bonham envious. Five tense minutes later, the fog lifted and we breathed a synchronized sigh of relief.
Not long after our stressful moment on the mountain concluded, we arrived at our shared old stomping grounds. We walked through streets of downtown State College to kill some time and grab some grub. I introduced my dad to the wonders of Big Bowl Noodle House, a divine Chinese restaurant that’s always ready to bless you with the finest carbs and MSG you’ll find in Centre County.
Dad, aka Scott Dog, enjoying a mean eggplant dish.
We walked off our meals with a campus stroll down memory lane. My dad shared never-heard-before tales of his college buddy nicknamed Fuzzy. Fuzzy earned the nickname for just being a hairy bastard with a beard. His most notorious act came when he dumped a beer down a tropical fish tank in an attempt to get the aquatic pets in on the action. Fittingly, Fuzzy, like many other college students that primarily were associated by their nickname, partied out of school. I grew envious of my father’s college experience including the ubiquitous nature of memorable nicknames for your friends in the 70s and 80s. In the mid 2010s, we referred to a couple of friends simply by just their last name or occasionally, a combination of their liquor of choice with a word that rhymed with said liquor. Both are lame in comparison to Fuzzy.
With a couple hours to kill before the next session, we decided to get post-Chinese and pre-wrestling brewskis at a bar neither of us had ever been to before: Brothers. While the name evoked a hackneyed-titled pizza shop, the sticky floors certified its status as a college bar. Each step towards the bar became more arduous than the last as the residue of beer or whatever mysterious ingrained substance attempted to ensnare me as prey for the bar’s “deals.” Brothers: Your premier spot for a $6 can of Red Bull, an $18 mixed-drink pitcher (comprised most likely of two-thirds ice, 80 grams of sugar, and one whole magnanimous shot of liquor) and just $5 for whatever pricey twelve ounce seltzer is the flavor of the month amongst college-aged consumers!
After careful deliberation, we opted for a couple of IPA drafts. I imagined Fuzzy would have approved of the groundbreaking nutritional approach of following a heavy meal with a heavy beer. We cheersed to the legend of Fuzzy. My drink’s pour was poor, but the taste was enriched by rich-flavored hops.
The BJC Day 1
Later that day, we arrived at the Bryce Jordan Center (BJC) for the tournament’s semi-final session. My opinion of the BJC vacillates depending on type of the event I’m attending. For the wrestling team’s significant regular season dual matches, the BJC’s intimate setup amplifies the event to create a top environment in college wrestling. For concerts, the BJC is on par with other 10,000+ seat arenas that lack the ideal acoustics of a 2000-5000 seat theater but is large enough to accommodate the sizable crowds of big-named talents. Like the Penn State Athletic Department, the BJC did not plan for basketball. On top of awkward dribbling acoustics, the seating layout is not conducive to home court advantage or a spectacular 200-level vantage point.
To its credit, the BJC has improved its concessions since my last visit. A couple of years ago, an event attendee would be limited to the choices of an overly meaty hot dog devoid of a well-balanced taste or love, a dining hall-caliber hamburger sold at twice the price, and a basket of chicken fingers and fries that was always inconveniently sold in the stand furthest away from your seats. Now, one can order brisket mac and cheese, cheesesteaks, Nashville hot chicken sandwiches, and most significantly, beer. Even though it’s been a few years, I’m still getting used to the integration of suds at college sporting events.
For one easy payment of $16, you can purchase a premium pounder of your third-favorite IPA or seltzer. Sure, it’s more costly than most MLB ballparks, but I reassured myself with the thought that my New Trails Broken Heels IPA will help fund the NIL deal required to sign a new backup long snapper. The new automatic checkout also alleviated my financial worries as I sauntered out of the stand without seeing a point-of-sale display with a bloated, liquor tax-included price.
To ensure he remained drinking on a full stomach, my dad spurned the popular new food items and instead opted for a cinnamon raisin bagel in plastic wrap, likely leftover from the morning session, sitting near the front of the counter of the Pick & Roll food stand. I imagined he was the only one of the thirteen thousand-strong-turnout that ordered a bagel after 5:30 PM, but he certainly made a better “snack” decision than me. Enticed by the cinnamon smell pervading through the concourse’s air, I ended up getting a bag of cinnamon-roasted almonds that consisted of 60% sugar, 25% cinnamon, 10% salt, and 5% almonds.
We then headed up to Section 213 to take in the action from our nosebleed seats with a clear view of only the nearest of the four ongoing matches. Adding to the viewing experience’s degree of difficulty, was that all of Big Ten teams with red in their color scheme (literally half the wrestling programs in the conference) sported similarly-colored, bright red singlets even when wrestling against each other.
Despite long morning commutes from other states, the blue-collar folks around us were fueled by their intense passion for the sport and their love of the Nittany Lions as they entered their sixth hour of watching wrestling on the day. In no sports setting, have I, a well-versed fan across a wide range of sports, felt like such a casual. (Which I totally am in the world of wrestling and would not deny the moniker!) Whether if it was identifying any minor infraction committed before it was whistled, the history of every wrestler’s recruitment to their current school, or just predicting the exact results of a match before they happened, the fans surrounding us knew their stuff. Furthermore, you could tell how much they live for this sport by their desensitized reactions to probable injuries on the mat. While I winced in pain as I witnessed guys roll on their heads, competitors receive the punishing end of a vigorous slam into a mat causing an audible reverberation around the arena, and the disturbing sight of watching the body of an unconscious wrestler suddenly go limp, they remained unfazed as their faces maintained the same jovial expression throughout the entirety of the session. (Thankfully, that specific knocked-out wrestler was awoken quickly by smelling salts and in the least surprising wrestler move of all time, he attempted to continue the match. Unfortunately for him and his team, following the concussion protocol, the unaffiliated conference neurologist prevented him from scrambling his brain further for the sake of school pride.) Undeniably, hardcore wrestling fans are a different breed. However, for this bunch, their most discernable characteristic had to be their salt-of-the-earth personalities. They provided us both with easy-to-understand explanations of obscure rules and recommended restaurants to visit in their rural neck of the woods if we ever pass through.
I attempted to beat the intermission crowd and take a quick visit to the urinal and beer stand before the action at 149 pounds was set to begin. The 149-pound semi-final matches, one including top-ranked Penn Stater Shane Van Ness, got underway sooner than expected. As I was zipping up, a thunderous roar surged through every inch of the venue. In a startled state, I contemplated what had caused that ruckus. Did Van Ness achieve an incredible feat to animate the fanbase or did conference opponents cheer in unison over an underdog’s unexpected victory?
I gained no context to the situation as I exited the restroom to a surprisingly-empty concourse scene. I was only joined by a cardboard cutout of a jacked vanilla ice cream cone wrestler and an advertisement for world-renowned ventriloquist Jeff Dunham’s long-anticipated return to the BJC in April. I attempted to check my phone for updates on social media pages and websites covering the event, but nothing would load. Attendees started to flood out of their sections into the concourse as the ten-minute intermission began. Murmurs discussing the action focused on the other longer-lasting semi-final match. As I headed back towards my section, I bought another beer and considered buying some conference championship-branded merch to commemorate our trip. However, the long sleeve shirt’s $60 price tag and Shein-like quality, deterred me away from making another regrettable financial decision.
I hiked up the stairs back to the deceptively lower-sounding-than-it-was Row F and was greeted with good news: Van Ness pinned his opponent in thirty-six seconds. I cracked open my orange can and took the first of many celebratory swigs of the session’s second half as Penn State’s dominance rolled on for the next hour. The Nittany Lions took a commanding lead in the team standings and the conference championship title was inevitable.
A Rough Ramada Experience
Following the conclusion of the first night’s action, we made our way down South Atherton Street to retire to our hotel for the night. We quickly noticed how seedy certain sections of this road have become in recent years. Rows of shuttered small businesses sat silently, gagged by layers of cardboard over their windows. Further down the road, several stretches featured eerily abandoned motels that looked like the ideal setting for a horror movie or video game.
We checked into the State College Ramada that felt more like a two-star motel instead of the three-star hotel it paraded itself as online. Even with booking it six weeks in advance on the same day as when general tournament tickets went on sale, our room’s price was gouged to $450 for a single night, one of the cheaper rates in town that evening. We were thankful are room didn’t smell like a cigarette, but were irritated by a couple of the bathroom’s quirks. Instead of a standard switch, a guest would need to manually set the wall’s timer to take care of their business in the light. Even worse, as it wound down, audible ticking noises rang out every second until the room returned to a state of darkness. Additionally, the convoluted shower knobs required more fiddling than the devil’s visit to the Peach State just to produce a lukewarm water temperature. Our lodging situation worsened as our slumber was rudely interrupted. We expected subpar sleep due to the Daylight Savings Time hour loss (the most idiotic thing that our divided country unitedly agrees needs to be eliminated, but then every spring, our sleep is negatively affected for weeks due to inaction by our representatives on the easiest legislative layup of all time), but did not plan to be woken up multiple times by our inconsiderate, middle-aged, Rutgers-supporting scumbag neighbors who kept their 10th place celebration going through the middle of the night.
I woke up in a groggily state to the angelic sight of my father entering our room with two ten-ounce Ramada-branded paper cups of coffee. He handed me one and notified me of an unfortunate update. Earlier that morning, he discovered a rain-soaked parking ticket from the university nestled between the windshield and one of its wipers. Somehow, we both missed a three-inch-long bright orange sleeve even when the wipers waved it back and forth in front of our faces on a slower setting in the drizzling rain. My father committed the heinous crimes of parking in the wrong, poorly-labeled lot and backing into a spot without possessing a license plate at the front of his car. For these grievous offenses, he would face the punishment of a combined $50 fine. I appreciated Penn State trusting us to park in the right area, but I would have preferred the reassurance of a parking lot attendant on a decent wage confirming we were in the right spot. For Penn State, it’s easier and more financially lucrative to just obfuscate parking through the cover of an uninformative third-party parking app guiding its users with inaccurate coordinates to incorrect lots. This process ultimately provides the university with both plausible deniability and fan-extorted NIL funding in the form of parking fines.
State College Day 2
To blow off some steam, we decided to walk around the northern parts of campus and eat lunch at the State College staple The Corner Room. For now, Penn State does not charge visitors to walk around the arboretum, but I’m sure that’ll change in the coming years. We then agreed that a weekend trip to the area would be incomplete without teaberry ice cream from Meyer’s Dairy. We enjoy a variety of flavors offered at Penn State’s world-famous Berkey Creamery, but when there’s an event on campus that draws in many out-of-state visitors, they all descend on the Creamery in droves and form a lengthy line that cuts mightily into your free time. Plus, our favorite, old-fashioned, sometimes-hard-to-find flavor, teaberry, is a year-round offering at Meyer’s Dairy whereas the Creamery only has it in stock for three months in the summer.
I’m not sure Mr. Meyer would be pleased with what happened to his sacred teaberry recipe.
We ordered two dishes. While we waited, I admired the glass bottles of milk sold in the store’s refrigerated section, which were collected from the Holsteins on the property. I then thought about the bygone era of my father’s youth and how delivering these bottles once was a vital occupation for a community dependent on its daily source of dairy. The teenage cashier called out our order. Eager to once again taste the pink-colored delicacy, we both looked dumbfounded when we noticed our bowls contained an ice cream whiter than a Big Ten wrestling crowd. My dad inquired why we were mistakenly served vanilla. The young employee invalidated our assumption. He notified us that we were served teaberry, but Meyer’s Dairy recently modified their recipe, so it no longer contains its distinct flamingo-like hue. We took a few bites. We agreed it featured hints of teaberry’s unique flavor, but it was deficient of the classic cooling yet sweet mint intertwined with berry sensation of the ice cream that we know and love. I lacked the food science expertise to determine what specific ingredients were substituted, but I did possess the disappointed tastebuds necessary to know they cheaped out on their product with a new hollow version.
BJC Day 2
We returned to the BJC for the last session of the conference tournament. Our Section 213 neighbors awoke from their intersession siestas to greet us as we shimmied past them to get to our seats. At this point, my neck, lower back, and perennially-tight hamstrings all ached simultaneously. I hypothesized that the combination of thirty-thousand steps over a twenty-eight-hour period, an inadequate amount of deep sleep, and poor posture stemming from an acute body angle required to keep up with the priority matches on the center mats all contributed to my condition. However, we were in the home stretch. There was no time for bellyaching. Fortunately, even with excessively long media timeouts between weight classes that allowed the Big Ten Network to air an extra midwest-targeted ad likely about an extra mild queso or specialty underwear for the stout blue-collar man, the finals provided ample entertainment to distract my mind away from my sore state.
My G.O.A.T.
Championship matches were settled in sudden victory, challenge bricks were overzealously tossed out of coaches’ hands, and consolation match wrestlers awkwardly paced back and forth in an effort to stay pumped up as they awaited the finalists to arrive. All of these aspects maintained the smile on my face over the two-hour round, but none made my grin expand from ear to ear like the virtuoso performance during 165-pound match. Not only is Penn State’s Mitchell Messenbrink the best wrestler across all college weight classes, but he’s also an unrelenting tour de force on the mat with a blitzkrieg style of attack that generates a perpetually delightful form of wrestling nirvana even for rival fans. As his skill continues to soar to a higher plane, a lower-scoring twelve-point performance, for his standards, still left spectators at home or in the BJC euphoric. On the other side of the mat, his opponents face seven minutes of absolute hell, assuming the match lasts that long. Mitchell’s length and speed immediately places adversaries at a severe unfair disadvantage from the get-go. The end of the period buzzer provides them with their only source of momentary reprieve from the battering.
Levi Hens and the boys did it again!
Messenbrink and his Nittany Lion teammates added another team trophy to an already-overcrowded trophy case. We left the celebration early before the trophy was lifted in the air to the elation of the home crowd as my father exclaimed, “We need to go before Penn State charges us with a conference championship tax!” We escaped before the imaginary taxman could catch us. As we moved slowly through post-event traffic, I realized even when they include a few vexing or unsatisfactory moments, I’ll always treasure every sports outing with my dad!