MINNEAPOLIS – After 17 years in the Minnesota wrestling room, Gopher Wrestling Club (GWC) head coach Dustin Schlatter has decided to step down to pursue other opportunities outside of the sport, as announced by the club on Friday afternoon.
Since taking the helm of the regional training center in May 2018, Schlatter helped lead GWC to its first Olympic gold medalist and first World Team member, and has had at least one athlete qualify for Final X to compete for a World Team spot in each year of his tenure. In the previous Olympic cycle, Gopher Wrestling Club qualified eight athletes for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team Trials under Schlatter.
Most recently, Gopher Wrestling Club has become the standard at the 125-kilogram weight class by housing the best heavyweight wrestlers in the nation the past two seasons. In 2021, Gable Steveson won the gold medal in the Tokyo Olympics with a win over Georgia’s Geno Petriashvili, before Hayden Zillmer punched his ticket to the 2022 World Championships in Serbia with a best-of-three series win over Nick Gwiazdowski at Final X this past June.