Last month, the Big Ten announced that Gable Steveson won the Big Ten Jesse Owens Male Athlete of the Year. He is the fifth male Gopher to win the award and the first since fellow wrestler Cole Konrad in 2007.

Steveson has had one of the best careers in Gopher history. He has a 90-2 record in matches over his four years of wrestling and hasn’t lost a match since his freshman season in 2018-19.

After going undefeated in the regular season, Steveson was the No. 1 overall seed for the 2022 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships in the heavyweight class. He won the tournament for the second time in his collegiate career ( first winning in 2021) after defeating Cohlton Schultz from Arizona State University.

Steveson also received the Dan Hodge Trophy at the end of the season, which is awarded to the best collegiate wrestler. This is his second time winning the award, after sharing it with Spencer Lee from Iowa in 2021.

Collegiate awards are not the only hardware Steveson has under his belt. He won the gold medal at the 2021 Olympics in men’s freestyle wrestling for the heavyweight class, defeating Geno Petriashvili from Georgia, the reigning UWW (United World Wrestling) World Champion at the time.

After the Olympics, Steveson signed with WWE and will pursue professional wrestling after his collegiate career. The WWE worked out an NIL deal with Steveson that allowed him to play a limited schedule this season while also being financially compensated.

He was assumed to retire from amateur wrestling but said he has not completely ruled out a return to the Gophers for next season. Whatever Steveson does next season, he will be remembered as one of the greatest wrestlers and athletes in program history.