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UNIVERSITY PARK -- Penn State senior Aaron Brooks was named the 2024 Hodge Trophy as the nation's best collegiate wrestler.
The award honors the top college wrestler every year. It was established in 1995 and is wrestling's equivalent to college football's Heisman Trophy. Brooks won the 2024 NCAA title at 197 with a perfect 22-0 record. He had six pins, 11 technical falls and three majors.
Brooks, a five-time All-American, was one of two Penn State wrestlers to become four-time NCAA Champions at the NCAA tournament on March 21-23 (joined by teammate Carter Starocci). He ends his career at Penn State with an 89-3 career record. Brooks becomes the fifth Penn State Nittany Lion to win the school's seventh award. Kerry McCoy (1997), David Taylor (2012, 2014), Zain Retherford (2017, 2018) and Bo Nickal (2019) have also been honored. Penn State, with seven total trophies, is the only school in the nation with more than four.
Paralleling his coach, Cael Sanderson, Penn State's Aaron Brooks won three NCAA titles at 184 pounds before deciding to move up to the 197-pound weight class in pursuit of his fourth collegiate crown this season.
Partly because his body was growing and the weight cut to 184 was becoming more difficult, but Brooks also asserted that he wanted to make his final season more fun by challenging himself to face new opponents at a higher weight class.
It is that type of mentality, the desire to seek new challenges and never become complacent, that propelled Brooks to a dominating senior season that saw the North Hagerstown, Md. native post a 22-0 record with three major decisions, 11 technical falls and six falls en route to becoming just the seventh-ever four-time NCAA Division I wrestling champion.
With that final stat sheet, Brooks has officially been named the recipient of the 2024 WIN Magazine/Culture House Dan Hodge Trophy awarded to the nation's top college wrestler.
The seventh Nittany Lion to win the Hodge, Brooks comfortably won the vote as he acquired 48 out of 59 first-place votes. The Hodge Trophy Voting Committee is comprised of: a retired college coach from each region of the country, a representative from each of the national wrestling organizations, select national media members and past Hodge winners.
Second-place Parker Keckeisen (Northern Iowa, 184 pounds) received eight first-place votes, Carter Starocci (Penn State, 174) got two votes and Greg Kerkvliet (Penn State, HWT) received one vote.
"I am really happy for Aaron," Sanderson added. "He worked hard, kept improving in all of his positions and had a dominating season."
Brooks accumulated the highest portion of the fan votes as well, which accounted for the final five of first-place votes. The four-time NCAA champion received 13,416 votes out of the total 26,928 fan votes that were cast online March 26-29. Keckeisen finished second in the fan vote with 9,675, while Starocci finished third with 1,868.
"Winning the Hodge Trophy is a blessing," Brooks said. "It is like the Heisman Trophy in football, so to know the hard work and dedication I've put in is being rewarded with such a historic award is really cool."