Ohio State's Moore making NCAA season debut in Vegas after winning U23 World silver

For the first time in the 2018-19 NCAA wrestling season, two-time All-American Kollin Moore will suit up in an Ohio State singlet.

This weekend, Moore and several other Buckeyes head out West to the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invite, which is one of the premier tournaments of the season.

His Buckeye teammates have already won three dual meets and dominated the Ohio Intercollegiate Open.

So what’s taken so long for Moore to get on the NCAA mat?

The past few months Moore has been preparing for the U23 World Championships. Two weeks ago, the Buckeye represented the USA in Bucharest, Romania, where he won a World silver medal at 97 kg/213 lbs.

It was his second World medal as he also garnered a Junior World bronze medal in 2017.

Days after claiming bragging rights as the No. 2 wrestler in the world in his age-group, Moore is itching to get back to competing for the Buckeyes.

“I went to our first dual against Navy just to watch and hang out with the team, and I really wanted to be out there. I’m excited to compete with the rest of the guys this weekend,” Moore said.

The two-time All-American has had little rest time with the busy summer and fall that he orchestrated.

While some of his teammates were home for the summer, Moore put in extra time, training with three-time World and Olympic champion Kyle Snyder and three-time World and Olympic champ for Turkey Taha Akgul for the World Championships, which paid off.

In order to jump from one major event right into the college season, Moore said there’s one main key.

“The biggest thing to stay fresh is keeping a good, healthy attitude,” Moore said. “If you come in exhausted and not mentally ready, that’s when you’re going to get hurt. If you’re excited and ready to get better, sometimes you don’t even realize how long you’ve been going. That’s the biggest challenge is staying excited day in and day out.”

While most say “wrestling is wrestling,” Moore admits that there are some things to adjust to when switching from freestyle to folkstyle.

“This week, it was a little harder than I thought it was going to be, taking a guy down and then remembering ‘oh crap, he’s not going to belly out,’” Moore said.  “Guys are going to fight to the death and roll around to get up from bottom. I have to adjust to that and stay focused and remember that if I take a guy down, I just have to crush him into the mat.”

Moore enters his first folkstyle event of the season as the No. 1 seed at 197 pounds and the returning CKLV champion. Also in his weight class are several NCAA qualifiers as well as U23 World teammate Christian Brunner of Purdue.

The Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invite is slated for Nov. 30-Dec. 1 and can be viewed live on FloWrestling.org.