When Sean Seefeldt brought home a Strongsville Wrestling Club flyer during first grade, no one could’ve predicted he’d take home the Ohio High School Athletic Association Division I state title 11 years later. Now a junior wrestler at Penn, Seefeldt boasts a national No. 19 ranking in the toughest weight class in college wrestling.
“I[’ve] never looked back since,” Seefeldt said. “[I] just kind of fell in love with it.”
Everyone from the Greater Cleveland area knows that if you’re an athlete, St. Edward’s High School is the place to be. Even before becoming an Eagle, Seefeldt grew to love Ed’s through hit local documentary “Pinned,” which depicts a David and Goliath wrestling tale of Ed’s crosstown rival school. “It really kind of just got me fired up and excited to wrestle,” he said.
So, for a wrestler beginning to make a name for himself on the national stage, the choice was obvious: Ed’s or nowhere.
“St. Ed’s is obviously an incredibly storied high school wrestling program,” Penn wrestling coach Matt Valenti said. “Through the years I’ve wrestled with, I’ve known, [and] I’ve recruited wrestlers out of St. Ed’s, and one of the great things about that program is the type of people, the type of character you’re getting when you recruit from that program.”
In other words, Sean Seefeldt isn’t an ordinary D-I wrestler.
Seefeldt has changed weight classes with every season, growing into his body and taking down the competition with him. The Strongsville, Ohio native has competed collegiately in five of the NCAA’s 10 weight classes, and his biggest jump — entering Penn at 125 to competing as a junior at 165 — has been by far the most successful.
Despite his success on the mat, Seefeldt remains humble and grateful every step of the way. According to Valenti, the choice to appoint Seefeldt as the wrestling team’s sole junior captain was a no-brainer.
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But for Seefeldt, it was not just about the title. The true honor was the opportunity to wrestle alongside his best friends. After all, as iron sharpens iron, teammate sharpens teammate. As captain, Seefeldt gets to do what he truly loves — pushing his teammates while improving because of them.
Penn wrestling has also opened Seefeldt up to new possibilities, like traveling abroad for the first time to train with the Japanese national team. He learned that sharing a language isn’t the only way to connect with strangers.
“It just kind of showed me how special the sport of wrestling is to me and the world in general,” Seefeldt said. “It’s a bond the sport of wrestling can have despite language barriers, especially because at the end of the day, it was all respect.”
That connection through wrestling was also fostered on social media. In just over a year, Seefeldt accumulated over 9,000 followers on Instagram and over 5,000 followers on TikTok through frequent short-form videos. Almost all of his content is centered around wrestling or the Ivy League student-athlete experience.
“I feel like I’m doing something special,” he said, “I want other people to see that and feel like they can do something special in their lives.”
And even if reels depicting blueberries and bananas on ground beef or artificial-intelligence-generated images of wrestling through the ages might not be inherently revolutionary, Seefeldt and fellow teammate Kelly Dunnigan’s social media presence has changed Penn wrestling.
“At a couple [of] tournaments this season, there [have] been a couple younger kids who asked for pictures and tell me they love my stuff,” Seefeldt said. “It’s really inspiring to see this kind of stuff because they’re younger wrestlers and their generation kind of looks up to me.”
It’s not only younger wrestlers. People back home, even those he hasn’t spoken to in a while, watch his videos and “they’re loving it and telling me to keep up with it.”
“We talked to high schoolers; everyone knows Kelly [Dunnigan] and Sean,” Valenti said. “And the best part about it is, this isn’t just a ‘curated for social media’ thing. This is truly who these guys are.”
At the end of the day, Seefeldt still holds the same passion and interest in the lifestyle wrestling as he did when he was a little kid. Off the mat, Seefeldt is guided by his faith and “just boulin’ it” — an inside joke-turned personal philosophy about “taking everything as it comes.”
Attending church every Sunday as a kid strengthened Seefeldt’s resolve. Although his relationship with God and wrestling has changed over the years, he’s come to realize that no matter what happens, it happens for a reason. Even through injuries, dropped matches, shifting weight classes, or taking a gap year, behind all of his decisions, there’s no pressure for Sean Seefeldt — just faith.
“Sean is somebody who has grown so many ways here at Penn,” Valenti said. “And I mean that literally and figuratively — Sean came in as a lightweight … [now] he’s nationally ranked at 165 pounds.”
