Kyle Dake earns spot on national team

Lansing’s Kyle Dake continues to prove he is one of the best wrestlers in the world at 31 years old. He has won 60 of his last 61 matches and recently earned a spot on the U.S. National Wrestling Team for the fifth time June 8 at Final X inside Madison Square Garden.

To do so, Dake had to win a best-of-three series against three-time NCAA Champion Jason Nolf. Dake won a pair of low-scoring matches, 4-2 and 2-1, to secure his spot at September’s World Championships.

Last year, Dake faced Nolf twice and shut him out 11-0 and 5-0, with the 11-0 match lasting less than a minute. Nolf secured a takedown against the three-time World Champion this time around, and Dake had to make some adjustments.

“I knew it was gonna be a tough match,” Dake said. “It was a little more nip and tuck than I thought it was going to be. His style — the way he really dominates people in wins — is that he goes out and he has a high-flying style, and that kind of threw me for a little bit of a loop. He didn’t really attack, didn’t really come at me. He kept his distance and actually got a takedown. I was able to come back and score a handful of pushouts and just manufacture a win.”

Dake excels defensively, only allowing more than three points to be scored on him just three times in his last 61 matches. That trend did not change last week, and he explained how Nolf was able to get his few points.

“The only offensive points that he scored were on a lapse of judgment or lapse of concentration, I think, on my part,” Dake said. “I don’t have many of those, but sometimes, it happens, and you just tend to adapt and roll with the punches as they occur. Hats off to him. He had a good game plan, executed it fairly well, and I was just the better man that day.”

Last summer in Tokyo — where Dake won a bronze medal in his first-ever trip to the Olympics — was the biggest stage Dake has ever wrestled on. The four-time NCAA Champion discussed how he’s adjusted his mindset since his trip to the games.

“Doing the little things right every day will pay dividends in the future,” Dake said. “It’s worked in the past by staying concentrated and making some sacrifices and really putting my career and my health and my wellness ahead of everything else. I think that continuing to do that is really important, also, just being able to adapt and evolve on the fly. These are all things that I feel like I’ve always done, but you can always get a little bit sharper, a little bit better.”

Dake wanted to prove last year that he is getting better with age. Defeating Jordan Burroughs to make it to the Olympics for the first time and taking home a bronze medal certainly showed that. He talked about what his goals are now after his run at gold.

“My goal is just to continue to evolve and get better,” Dake said. “I want to be the best possible version of myself and I hold myself to a really high expectation. I set really high goals, really high targets for myself and I try to go get them. I know the areas that I need to work on. I know the things that I need to do. It’s just going out there and executing those things is the hard part.”

Finding ways to improve when you’re getting your hand raised in victory as often as Dake can be difficult. He detailed that high standard he sets so that he’s always striving for something greater.

“I’m really critical of myself,” Dake said. “Even in my winning ways, even if I dominate when I go out there, I still realize that there’s a lot more that I could do. There’s a better path and I can become more refined. It might be difficult for an outsider to see, but for me, I see these massive gaps that I cover up really well, especially when I compete, but they’re still there. I want to fix those. I want to close those gaps up and really make sure that I’m becoming the most well-rounded, best balanced, most efficient, most effective wrestler that I can possibly be.”

With the next Olympics two years away and Dake at 31 years of age, he discussed what keeps him going in such a physical sport.

“I just really enjoy the sport,” Dake said. “I love the day-to-day. I love competing. I feel like it’s kind of a part of me, a part of my identity, part of who I am. If I have more to give, I want to continue to get it. Really, it just comes down to, ‘Am I happy doing what I’m doing?’ I’m just excited to go out there and compete.”

Dake will be chasing a fourth World Championship when he travels to Serbia with the U.S. National Team in September with another chance to add to his extensive trophy case.

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