James Hackney
The 2024 Olympic Trials are being held at Penn State this year and Missouri is well represented. Mizzou has three athletes competing, with Keegan O’Toole having to drop out of the tournament after an injury at NCAA’s. The other Mizzou wrestlers are Jarrett Jacques, J’den Cox, and Dom Bradley.
I’ll run through the wrestlers, how they qualified, and some previews on potential opponents. The winners of each bracket will be qualified for the Olympic Team. The trials can be streamed live on Peacock starting on April 19th.
74kg: Jarrett Jacques – 11 Seed
Jacques has made an impressive mark in freestyle already, qualifying for his first Olympic Trials. He qualified by finishing top four at Senior Nationals in December where he scored relevant wins over Josh Shields and Joe Sealey before dropping a match to Quincy Monday. Jacques then finished fourth behind Alex Facundo. He also had a solid performance at the Bill Farrell tournament where he scored wins over Joe Sealey, Michael Kemerer, and Wyatt Sheets.
Jacques was originally the 12 seed but with O’Toole dropping out gets bumped a spot. He will now take on Vincenzo Joseph in his first match, the six seed. Joseph was a two-time NCAA champ for PSU in college Joseph has already had quite a bit of success in domestic freestyle and qualified for the Trials by winning the Last Chance Open. Last year Joseph made the US Open finals before dropping a match to former teammate Jason Nolf.
Jacques has racked up wins over former All-Americans in impressive fashion, but Joseph is a bigger contender than his seed may show. While he may not be at the top tier with the likes of Dake and Burroughs, Joseph won the Last Chance Open by outscoring his opponents 38-0 through five matches. If Jacques won this first match then he would see the three seed Quincy Monday, who has two wins over him in freestyle.
97kg: J’den Cox – 1 Seed
The most credentialed freestyle wrestler in Mizzou’s history, the six-time Olympic/World medalist is primed for a best of three matchup with Kyle Snyder in the finals. He has a bye in the first round then will take on the winner between OK State’s redshirt freshman Christian Carroll or Iowa’s three-time All-American Tony Cassioppi. Then in the semi’s he would see the winner between Nate Jackson or Kollin Moore.
He hasn’t wrestled Carroll or Cassioppi before, but has wins over Nate Jackson and Kollin Moore. He beat Kollin Moore in two straight matches at the 2021 World Team Trials, but went 2-1 against Nate Jackson in the 2022 World Team Trials….
