Biglerville’s Levi Haines will wrestle for a world championship on Monday.
The Penn State wrestling national champ won each of his four Sunday matches to advance to a gold-medal showdown in the 2025 Senior World Wrestling Championships in Zagreb, Croatia. He ended the day by rallying for a 4-1 semifinal victory over Suldkhuu Olonbayar of Mongolia in the 79-kilogram weight class.
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Haines, a Nittany Lion senior this fall, will now wrestle 2024 Olympian Georgios Kougioumtsidis of Greece for the gold medal, their finals round beginning at noon (ET) Monday.
Haines began his tournament with two decisive victories, the second by technical fall, before dramatically winning his quarterfinal match. He scored a takedown and a penalty point in the final two seconds to defeat former world champ Akhmed Usmanov of Russia, 3-2.
Haines’ impressive successes came a day after Penn State freshman teammate PJ Duke faltered in his quest to win a second world title this summer at 70 kilos. Duke lost his second-round tournament match, 11-7, to reigning senior world champ Nurkozha Kaipanov of Kazakhstan.
Penn State’s Levi Haines is introduced before wrestling Iowa’s Patrick Kennedy in the 174-pound bout on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025, in State College, Pa. The Nittany Lions won 30-8.
(Duke had already won a U20 World Wrestling Championship in August).
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The third wrestler with Penn State ties in Croatia is 97-kilo star Kyle Snyder, who’s a member of the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club. He begins wrestling in the freestyle tournament on Monday.
Haines, meanwhile, had qualified for this senior world tournament by winning Final X in Newark, New Jersey, back in June. That came after he won gold at the U23 Pan American Championships in April and finished third at 174 pounds at the NCAA Championships in March.
Haines won his national title in 2024 as a 157-pound wrestler.
Frank Bodani covers Penn State wrestling for the York Daily Record and USA Today Network. Contact him at fbodani@ydr.com and follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @YDRPennState.
This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Penn State’s Levi Haines at senior world wrestling championships