InterMat's All-Quarter Century Team: Minnesota

Welcome to a new recurring feature on InterMat celebrating the first 25 years of the 21st century. Every couple of days, we’ll examine a particular collegiate program and highlight its accomplishments over the past quarter century. 

First up for us is Minnesota. Minnesota is a team that claimed three NCAA team titles within the first seven years of the quarter century. Since then, they’ve remained a consistent force in the Big Ten. As you can see below, we can form two teams consisting entirely of All-Americans for the Gophers. 

Minnesota has long been regarded as “Heavyweight U” for college wrestling. That is on full display here as they’ve had a remarkable three multi-time national champions at 285 lbs since 2007. 

In making our first, second, and third teams, heavyweight was an extremely difficult choice. Also, there could be some discussion surrounding the following weights: 125, 149, and 184. At 149 lbs, we have a national champion and one of the most outstanding wrestlers of his time on the second team. 125 has a national runner-up on the third team ahead of two wrestlers who never make the finals. The only active wrestler on any of these teams comes at 184 lbs. With another year or two’s worth of results, he might have been able to make a case for his spot on the first team. 

Wrestlers considered for the three teams had to compete from 2001-25. For the wrestlers early in this timeframe, their entire collegiate body of work was considered. Only collegiate results were taken into consideration. 

After the three All-Century teams, there are some fun facts about Minnesota’s results over the past 25 years. 

Minnesota

First Team

125 lbs - Zach Sanders: Wabasha, Minnesota: 4x AA (3,5,5,6), Big Ten Runner-Up, NCAA #2 seed

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