Jimmy Kennedy was just recently fired as a coach of the Northwestern Wildcats for refusal to take the Covid-19 vaccine. Along with him head coach Andrew Howe was also terminated from his position.
It has just been announced that Kennedy will join the Penn State Nittany Lions and replace Jake Varner’s position. Varner will still be part of the Nittany Lions but he will be focused on the Olympic RTC instead and he has been promoted to the head of the RTC meaning Cael Sanderson would be the head coach of the college team and Jake Varner the head coach of the RTC.
Kennedy wrestled his college career at Illinois and was able to become a 3x All American so they are picking up a very good wrestler an experienced coach. He ended off his college career with a 119-24 record. He was a world team member for the USA in 2014 for Tashkent and he also made two other world team trials finals (2013,2017) and won the US Open in 2016.
“We are excited to be adding Jimmy Kennedy to the Penn State wrestling staff as our volunteer assistant coach – With the ascension of the Penn State RTC and the Nittany Lion Wrestling Club, we are now in a position to dedicate singular attention to running the RTC/NLWC as a head coach and a point person. We are fortunate to have Jake Varner to take on the duties of head coach of the RTC/NLWC” -Cael Sanderson. (gopsusports.com)
The outlook for Penn States success just keeps going up, on the college level and the senior level. They have been able to produce so many more wrestlers with international medals since Cael Sanderson and Jake Varner have been on the staff, and adding Jimmy Kennedy only adds to their stacked coaching staff and will make things a lot easier and efficient for Penn State which is a scary sight looking at their future.
