To represent his country, Payton Jacobson had to find competition outside its borders.
Jacobson, who calls Elkhorn home, clinched a spot in the 2024 Summer Olympics in April when he won the 87-kilogram Greco-Roman bracket at the U.S. Olympic wrestling trials in State College, Pennsylvania. The discipline lacks the stateside visibility of its brethren folkstyle and freestyle wrestling, so Jacobson followed an off-the-beaten path approach to find this level of success.
There’s no NCAA competition for the discipline; the only college that sponsors the sport is Northern Michigan University in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which doubles as a training ground for Greco Roman wrestlers competing nationally and internationally. It was Jacobson’s natural next home considering what he did in high school, walking away from WIAA wrestling after his sophomore year at Elkhorn…