How Penn State legend David Taylor plans to build as Oklahoma State’s wrestling coach

David Taylor was in the back of his barn when he noticed a missed phone call.

“I’m like, missed call from Oklahoma? I don’t know what this would be,” Taylor recalled Friday afternoon at his introductory press conference.

He listened to the voicemail and heard Oklahoma State athletic director Chad Weiberg’s voice on the other end introducing himself.

“I need to call him back,” Taylor recalled thinking. “Oklahoma State is one of those things where, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, your life goes on pause. You’re gonna think about this opportunity because it is one of the opportunities.”

Now, Taylor is tasked with leading the historic Oklahoma State wrestling program as a first-time head coach.

It will help the reigning Olympic gold medalist that he has a solid base of information to build a program with. He said he’s had some of the best coaches throughout his wrestling career, including Penn State head coach Cael Sanderson, and that he can take some of what he learned from everybody.

But with Sanderson and his staff, specifically, he said that connection was much deeper than that of just a coach.

“They were my family,” Taylor said. “They instilled so many things into me. Coaching was part of it, wrestling was part of it, technique was part of it, but they helped me understand a bigger picture of how to live your life to the best of your ability.”

That coaching was still taking place up until recently. Taylor — who announced he’s done with his competitive career — trained at the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club, the regional training center program, under Sanderson and competed in the Olympic Team Trials in State College in April. His loss to Aaron Brooks was a shock to the wrestling world.

Taylor said he was at a crossroads in his life for the first time in a long time, which is why he decided to get into coaching.

But still, the choice to take the Oklahoma State job was not an easy one to make.

“It’s tough,” Taylor said. “This was one of the toughest, probably couple days, of my life. I cried a lot.”

For Oklahoma State, the appeal of Taylor was obvious. Weiberg listed his many accomplishments as a wrestler, including how infrequently he suffered defeat, but was also drawn to who he is as a person.

“He is an entrepreneur, a businessman, a creative thinker and a problem solver,” Weiberg said. “A hard worker and relentless competitor — a community builder. He will bring a fresh set of eyes to this historic program and at the same time be a fit for the Cowboy family.”

Ultimately Taylor’s difficult decision led him to Stillwater, where he’ll try and build a dynasty much like Sanderson, his mentor, has in State College. His first two additions to the Cowboys should help bring some of that Penn State culture.

He hired Nittany Lions assistant coach Jimmy Kennedy, who spent three years with the program and is Taylor’s brother-in-law, to be his associate head coach and brought in Thomas Gilman — who was competing at the team trials as a member of the NLWC where he trained — to be an assistant coach.

The NLWC has had plenty of success with wrestlers like Gilman and Taylor, and the new Oklahoma State head coach believes that’s an important part of building a program in his image with the Cowboys.

“College wrestlers need to understand what it looks like and what it feels like to be around the best people in the world,” Taylor said. “... I think it’s important for people to see what it looks like for people that are training at that level — and what it takes. It’s not easy. ... It’s hard. It’s something that you can’t really understand what that is like until you’ve been around it. And we’re gonna have that here. We want to have a path for the student-athletes. They’re gonna come to Oklahoma State and win national championships and when they’re done they have a future, they have a career.”

As Taylor also said, it’s one thing to say those things, it’s another to do them. In leaving the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club, he is leaving one of the greatest collections of wrestling talent in the world. He will go from being a part of that to competing directly against it.

Fortunately for him and Oklahoma State, he has the tools to succeed — the name recognition and dominant track record to recruit the best and the talent and wrestling acumen to make them even better — much like Sanderson did when he arrived in Happy Valley.

And while he’s headed to a new environment, and a situation where he doesn’t have the comfort of what he’s known for over the last decade, Taylor believes he can take what he’s seen at Penn State and create some of it in Stillwater.

“I think being uncomfortable is something that creates really good things,” he said.

“We’re going to create our own little magic down here.”