Carter Starocci’s five national titles once felt like the kind of mark that would sit untouched for a long, long time. Now, thanks to the NCAA’s new 5-in-5 rule, that ceiling has been lowered just enough for somebody else to chase it.
Starocci became the first wrestler in NCAA history to win five national championships when he finished his run in 2025, collecting four titles at 174 pounds before moving up and winning his last one at 184. His career ended with a 104-4 record across six years, and for a while it looked like his place in the record book might be locked in as a one-off - the product of a once-in-a-generation career and the strange eligibility landscape created by the pandemic.
That pandemic piece mattered. Starocci redshirted in 2019-20, the season that never got to hold an NCAA Wrestling Championships because of COVID-19.
Every athlete that year received an extra year of eligibility, and that opened the door for Starocci’s five-title run. The assumption was that once college sports settled back into a normal four-year framework, nobody would have the same path again.
But college sports has moved in the opposite direction. The new 5-in-5 rule gives all college athletes five years to compete and removes redshirts across college sports. In other words, every wrestler from here on out will have the same basic runway Starocci used to build his unmatched résumé.
At the most recent NCAA Wrestling Championships, five freshmen won gold, including Penn State’s Luke Lilledahl at 125 and Josh Barr at 197. Both of them redshirted first, though, which means they have three more years left to compete.
The more intriguing group is at Oklahoma State, where David Taylor’s first full recruiting class produced an NCAA-record three true freshman champions: Jax Forrest at 133, Sergio Vega at 141 and Landon Robideau at 157. That trio now gives the Cowboys a real shot at producing a wrestler who could eventually push toward five titles of his own.
Whether it happens by 2030 or sometime later, the point is the same: Starocci proved the impossible can be done. Now it’s just possible again.
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