| Hello, my name is Dylan Jahrling. I am a Junior at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) majoring in Anthropology with a special interest in Lithic Analysis and ceramics, specifically in the southern part of Mexico and South America. I am also an Army vet. |
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| My experience in sports started when I was around nine years old in the Pacific Northwest in a town called Oak Harbor, Washington. My dad is a Navy veteran and at the time that is where he was stationed. I participated in multiple sports but my main two sports were football and wrestling. My first-ever wrestling coach was Lee Miracle with the “King of the Rock” wrestling club until I moved to Glendale Arizona in 2005. |
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| In high school, I continued to play football, wrestle, and track and field. However, wrestling is where I was excelling the most, ultimately leading to being my high school’s first State Finalist in almost 40 years and to my wrestling at North Iowa Area Community College (NIACC) in Mason City, Iowa under Coach Scott Kelly and TJ Sebolt. Unfortunately, I was feeling the burnout of being a college athlete and being so far away from home that I ended up dropping out and moving to Las Vegas where my dad was living at the time. |
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| After moving back home, I got involved with MMA and won a Middle-weight title with Tuff-N-Uff locally, and then another Middle Weight Title up in Saskatchewan, Canada. Shortly after that I felt I needed more of a change and enlisted in the United States Army. While in the Military I was stationed at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. I was still able to compete to some degree and was allowed to take part in a “combatives” tournament. This was a week-long competition that incorporated a lot of hand-to-hand fighting like Jiu-Jitsu, Wrestling, and Sambo before being full-on MMA rules. I was fortunate enough to win that tournament. It’s one of my favorite moments in Combat Sports. |
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| When my time in service was over, I moved back to Las Vegas and immediately enrolled in classes at CSN. I was there for roughly two semesters before transferring to UNLV in 2020. However, Covid would put me in a position to make the decision to once again drop out of school and focus on working full-time. That lasted for about two and a half years before I was back in classes at UNLV for the Fall of 2023. That’s when I learned about UNLV’s wrestling team and joined. Due to not performing too well back in 2020 I was unable to compete for UNLV, but I still came to practice and was able to wrestle in some opens, most notably, the US Open in the Masters Division where I made it to the Finals. |
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| In 2024 I was able to compete for UNLV, and with the help of my teammates I was able to obtain All-American Honors. It’s a good feeling being able to contribute to a program that is trying to bring back its Division-1 name and give local athletes an opportunity to compete at the college level. |
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