COMPETITIVE FIRE STILL BURNS IN KOLAT
It has been more than 28 years since Cary Kolat capped off his historic high school career with a fourth PIAA title and a 137-0 record, making the JeffersonMorgan wunderkind the first wrestler to win four Pennsylvania state titles without losing a match.
Even those who didn’t follow the sport closely knew Kolat didn’t just win every match he wrestled — he flat-out dominated virtually every opponent he faced. Only a select few managed to make it through the first period against him, and those who survived the full six minutes will likely tell their grandchildren about it.
“I knew I was driven,” Kolat said. “When you’re 8, you lay out your goals and say, ‘I’m going to go to the Olympics.’
“I think every kid has big goals and big dreams, but when I look back, I’m pretty surprised I did it. I didn’t know exactly how good I was going to be when I started.”
Kolat’s motor was never-ending and his trademark intensity was unmatched. His attacks on the feet were relentless, and once he got in top control, a painful pinning combination usually followed. On the rare occasions when an opponent managed to get a hold of his leg, Kolat was known to backflip his way out of trouble. You can’t do that anymore — just one of many rules the sport has developed with Kolat in mind.
To this day, many view Kolat as the greatest high school wrestler who ever lived. For him, though, that remarkable fouryear run was supposed to be just a footnote on his journey toward becoming one of America’s alltime greatest wrestlers.
“Honestly, I don’t really think about my high school career at all. I think everybody else does,” Kolat said. “When you’re competing and you want to be the best at whatever you’re doing — and I always strived to be perfect — my focus was always on winning NCAA titles and trying to be a world and Olympic champion.”
He began his college career at Penn State, where he placed second in the NCAA as a freshman and third as a sophomore. Impressive performances no doubt, especially for an underclassman — but not to Kolat. He wasn’t used to losing.
Unsatisfied with his results, Kolat decided he needed a change of scenery to refocus his mindset and transferred to Lock Haven. There, he won a pair of NCAA titles in 1996 and 1997 and finished his college career with a pristine 111-7 record, including 53 pins.
After graduating from Lock Haven, it was time for him to test himself on the international circuit. Unfortunately for Kolat, that’s when his story turned tragic. From the moment he began his international career, Kolat proved himself to be among the best wrestlers in the world, regardless of weight class — only to have outside forces prevent him from achieving his ultimate goal.
Kolat’s ill-fated quest for gold started in the 138¼-pound finals of the 1997 World Championships, when he lost to Abbas Hajd Kenari of Iran after Kenari repeatedly loosened and untied his shoes to buy himself some extra rest. Afterward, a new rule was implemented that requires wrestlers to tape their shoelaces to prevent them from coming loose.
The following year, Kolat won his quarterfinal bout against Bulgaria’s Serafim Barzakov at the 1998 World Championships, only to have the result protested by Barzakov after the match. Judges upheld the protest and awarded the victory directly to Barzakov, leading to another new rule that required any match in which a protest is upheld to be re-wrestled.
Kolat, meanwhile, wrestled back to win all of his consolation matches and earn a bronze medal.
With a bronze and silver medal already in tow, Kolat felt nothing could stop him from winning gold in his third attempt — not even a badly separated shoulder. He fought through the pain to reach the semifinals at the 1999 World Championships, where he faced and defeated former world champion Elbrus Tedeev of Ukraine — or so he thought.
Tedeev protested, and, as a result of the rule put in place the year before, the two re-wrestled the match. This time, Tedeev won in overtime, 2-1. Kolat finished in fourth place.
Finally, after making a fourth consecutive World Team, Kolat arrived at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, where he hoped to erase the heartbreaking memories of the past three years. In his first-round matchup, he defeated former world champion Mohammad Talaei of Iran in overtime, 3-1, only to see the result overturned by yet another protest.
Infused with new life for the rematch, Talaei jumped out to a 5-0 lead against a shell-shocked Kolat, who couldn’t believe what was happening to him again. Kolat battled back to within one point, but couldn’t even the score before time expired and lost, 5-4.
Just like that, his lifelong Olympic dreams were dashed. His very first day of competition on wrestling’s biggest stage would also be his last.
“I felt like I had all of them,” Kolat said about the controversial defeats. “You don’t get a chance to really recover from that. You’ve just got to keep moving forward.
“They all hurt, man. Every single one of them hurts.”
Along with the title of “Pennsylvania’s greatest high school wrestler,” Kolat now bears another moniker as a result of his misfortunes — greatest American freestyle wrestler never to win a World or Olympic gold medal. Kolat, though, takes no pride in consolation prizes.
“I hate that title,” Kolat said. “I’d rather have the medal.”
He competed sparingly after the 2000 Olympics, but for the most part, Kolat’s competitive fire had burned out. He won’t blame it on the officiating he dealt with year after year, but at a certain point, injustices like those will take their toll on any athlete.
After retiring from international competition, Kolat spent a few years as an assistant coach at West Virginia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Lehigh, and his alma mater, Lock Haven. He then ventured out into the business world and opened up his own wrestling club in Baltimore called Team Kolat, which he ran until 2010.
Around that time, Kolat decided to get back into coaching — this time with sights set on one day becoming a head coach. In 2014, he finally got that opportunity, taking over a struggling program at Campbell University with no real tradition or reputation in the sport.
In Kolat’s first year at the helm, the Camels struggled mightily to field a full team, sometimes conceding up to five forfeits per dual meet. By the time he moved on after the 2019 season, though, he had guided the program to three Southern Conference championships in six years and a top-15 national ranking.
“We did a good job of finding the right kids for our program,” Kolat said. “I put together a really good staff, and we just kept building it up over time.”
On March 20, Kolat decided it was time for a new challenge and accepted a new position as the head coach at Navy. He now hopes to engineer a similar turnaround with the Midshipmen, although things aren’t exactly in dire straits at Navy the way they were when he arrived at Campbell.
“I think there’s a point in everybody’s life where you’ve got to become uncomfortable again and make changes,” Kolat said. “Navy is an exciting program. It’s an unbelievable institution. It’s kind of the next challenge.”