Two years ago, almost to the day, the rug was completely ripped out from under Killian Cardinale.
After spending three years as a wrestler at Old Dominion in his home state of Virginia in March 2020, Cardinale just lost in the championship match of the MAC tournament. Less than a week later, COVID-19 shut down the sports world and uncertainty began to rise across all aspects of life.
What Cardinale didn’t expect was needing to find a new home if he wanted to continue his wrestling career.
Like many athletic programs across the country, Old Dominion was forced to make drastic financial decisions with revenue lost because of the pandemic. Wrestling was one of the first casualties for the Monarchs.
“It was crazy, it was just totally unexpected to all of us, we had no idea,” Cardinale said. “Our national championships got canceled, then lockdown happened and we couldn’t visit any schools. We had to do recruiting through Zoom, and that’s why I got ahold of Flynn and them.”
“Flynn and them” is WVU head coach Tim Flynn and the Mountaineers’ coaching staff, and for Cardinale, his ultimate decision to come to Morgantown paid off with two trips to the NCAA tournament the last two seasons.
This year’s edition begins Thursday as Cardinale (14-1), the No. 5 seed in the 125-pound weight class, will take on No. 28-seed Korbin Meink (11-5), of Campbell, in the opening round.
Coincidentally, during Cardinale’s final season at Old Dominion during the 2019-20 season, he defeated Meink with a 5-3 decision.
Cardinale is coming off an individual Big 12 championship after winning three matches in two days, which helped him earn a top-10 seed in the NCAA tournament.
He was also named an All-American with the Mountaineers as a junior last season and finished 7th at NCAAs.
While Cardinale’s path to WVU was loaded with misfortune and uncertainty, his path into wrestling at the start was straight and narrow.
His father, Joshua, wrestled growing up in New Jersey, then collegiately at George Mason outside of Washington, D.C. Killian’s grandfather also hit the mat growing up, along with his two uncles, so it’s spanned three generations and branched out ever since.
Cardinale was always around the sport — when his dad wasn’t wrestling himself, he was coaching it. There was never pressure for Cardinale to wrestle, but he always had motivation to keep getting better and better.
That motivation eventually led him to win several youth tournaments, which led to high school success, then rolled into college opportunities.
“Around eighth grade, I went down to Florida to compete with Team Virginia and ended up going undefeated,” Cardinale said. “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I can compete with all of these kids from different states and man, I’m getting pretty good.'”
While visiting colleges, he went to Edinboro (Pa.) when he met Flynn and built a relationship. Flynn coached at Edinboro for 22 seasons before coming to WVU in 2019.
However, Cardinale chose the Monarchs.
“ODU was really close, I liked the area,” he said. “It was 25 minutes away from the beach, which was nice. It was a decent scholarship offer. I wasn’t a blue-chip recruit out of high school, I was never ranked. My old coach (Steve Martin) saw how hard I worked and I think he saw a lot of potential out of me.”
Cardinale wrestled unattached during his redshirt season in 2017-18 and went 18-10, but took his lumps as a freshman the following season, going 12-18.
As a sophomore, Cardinale took off, finishing 25-9 and qualified for the NCAA tournament, but never got an opportunity to compete with the pandemic shutdown.
Since the program was disbanded, Cardinale said he was essentially a “free agent” and there was no need to go through the transfer portal. However, with the inability to visit other schools, he simply had to make his next move based off good vibes.
That’s what he got from WVU and Flynn, who reached out to Cardinale first when he knew he was available. A month after he was told the wrestling program at Old Dominion was gone, he committed and enrolled at WVU.
“It was definitely hard to adjust at first,” Cardinale said. “It’s hard to go to a new place in general, but especially during a pandemic. All of our classes were online, and we had separate practices over the summer where one group could go in and then another could go in, so I didn’t really get to get close with a lot of the guys until we started traveling more.
“Those first couple months were hard just to transition. I built a bunch of relationships at ODU. I still have a girlfriend there and all my former teammates. I’ve adjusted pretty well, though, since I got here.”
Cardinale will be joined by teammates Michael Wolfgram (heavyweight), Peyton Hall (165) and Dennis Robin (174) at the NCAA tournament. Cardinale, Hall, and Robin each earned an automatic bid, while Wolfgram was awarded one of five at-large bids, given to the heavyweight division.
The opening round kicks off at noon Thursday and will begin on ESPNU before switching to ESPN at 7 p.m. The tournament will continue Friday before ending on Saturday.
TWEET @SeanManning_1
