PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Penn State is closing in on its fourth straight Division I men’s wrestling championship and its 12th in 14 years under coach Cael Sanderson.
All 10 Penn State wrestlers earned All-American status Friday. The Nittany Lions join Minnesota's 2001 squad as the only teams to have that many All-Americans in one season.
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Lehigh's Sheldon Seymour takes on Penn State's Luke Lilledahl, front, in their 125-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Penn State's Tyler Kasak, top, takes on Purdue's Joey Blaze in their 157-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Illinois' Lucas Byrd, right, takes on Penn State's Braeden Davis in their 133-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Penn State's Levi Haines, left, takes on Navy's Danny Wask in their 174-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Illinois' Lucas Byrd takes, right, on Penn State's Braeden Davis in their 133-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Penn State's Tyler Kasak, right, takes on Purdue's Joey Blaze in their 157-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Penn State's Levi Haines, left, takes on Navy's Danny Wask in their 174-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Penn State got just three of its wrestlers through to Saturday's finals, but the Nittany Lions have a comfortable lead with 135.5 points. Nebraska is in second place with 101.5 points and Oklahoma State is in third with 91.
One of Penn State's finalists is Carter Starocci, who remains in contention for an unprecedented fifth national title. He defeated Oklahoma State’s Dustin Plott 9-3 in the semifinals to advance to the final at 184 pounds.
Starocci will face Northern Iowa's Parker Keckeisen, the defending champion at 184, in the final. Starocci's four championships were all at 174.
Penn State's top-seeded Mitchell Mesenbrink reached the 165 final and will face Iowa's Mike Caliendo. Another Nittany Lion, Josh Barr, defeated the No. 1 seed, Michigan's Jesse Cardenas, 5-3 to advance. He will face Iowa's Stephen Buchanan in the 197 final.
Nebraska is solidly in second place after a dominant performance Friday that saw three Cornhuskers reach the finals.
Two of Nebraska's wrestlers will face defending national champions as the Cornhuskers try to add to an impressive performance.
Nebraska's Brock Hardy will face Ohio State’s Jesse Mendez, the defending champion at 141, in the final at that weight. Nebraska’s Ridge Lovett meets Virginia Tech’s Caleb Henson, the defending champ at 149, in that final. Nebraska's Antrell Taylor will face Purdue's Joey Blaze for the national title at 157.
Oklahoma State, under first-year coach David Taylor, did its part to make things interesting by putting three wrestlers in the finals — Dean Hamiti, Troy Spratley and Wyatt Hendrickson.
Hamiti defeated Penn State's Levi Haines, a returning national champion at 157, 4-2 in the semifinals at 174. He will face Missouri's Keegan O'Toole, a national champion at 165 in 2022 and 2023, in the 174 final.
Spratley will wrestle North Carolina State’s Vincent Robinson in the 125 final.
Iowa is in fourth place with 73.5 points and sent three wrestlers to the finals. Iowa's Drake Ayala won his semifinal at 133 and will face Illinois' Lucas Byrd. Buchanan defeated Cal State Bakersfield's A.J. Ferrari, a 2021 national champion, 3-0 in a 197 semifinal to advance and join Caliendo in the finals.
Minnesota’s Gable Steveson, who has returned to college after retiring in 2022, could win his third heavyweight title. He extended his win streak to 70 matches with a 13-5 win over Lehigh's Owen Trephan in a semifinal. He'll face Oklahoma State's Hendrickson, a transfer from Air Force, in the final. Hendrickson beat defending national champion Greg Kerkvliet of Penn State 8-2 in a semifinal.
Lehigh's Sheldon Seymour takes on Penn State's Luke Lilledahl, front, in their 125-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Penn State's Tyler Kasak, top, takes on Purdue's Joey Blaze in their 157-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Illinois' Lucas Byrd, right, takes on Penn State's Braeden Davis in their 133-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Penn State's Levi Haines, left, takes on Navy's Danny Wask in their 174-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Illinois' Lucas Byrd takes, right, on Penn State's Braeden Davis in their 133-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Penn State's Tyler Kasak, right, takes on Purdue's Joey Blaze in their 157-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Penn State's Levi Haines, left, takes on Navy's Danny Wask in their 174-pound quarter finals match during the NCAA wrestling championships, Friday, March 21, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
New Jersey Transit train engineers went on strike Friday, leaving an estimated 350,000 commuters in New Jersey and New York City to seek other means to reach their destinations or consider staying home.
Groups of picketers gathered in front of transit headquarters in Newark and at the Hoboken Terminal, carrying signs that said “Locomotive Engineers on Strike” and “NJ Transit: Millions for Penthouse Views Nothing for Train Crews.”
Friday’s rail commute into New York from New Jersey is typically the lightest of the week. In New York, some commuters from New Jersey said they could not work remotely and had to come in, taking busses to the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan.
David Milosevich, a fashion and advertising casting director, was on his way to a photo shoot in Brooklyn. At 1 a.m. he checked his phone and saw the strike was on.
“I left home very early because of it,” he said, grabbing the bus in Montclair, New Jersey, and arriving in Manhattan at 7 a.m. “I think a lot of people don’t come in on Fridays since COVID. I don’t know what’s going to happen Monday.”
The walkout comes after the latest round of negotiations on Thursday didn’t produce an agreement. It is the state’s first transit strike in more than 40 years and comes a month after union members overwhelmingly rejected a labor agreement with management.
“We presented them the last proposal; they rejected it and walked away with two hours left on the clock," said Tom Haas, general chairman of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.
NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri described the situation as a “pause in the conversations.”
“I certainly expect to pick back up these conversations as soon as possible,” he said late Thursday during a joint news conference with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy. “If they’re willing to meet tonight, I’ll meet them again tonight. If they want to meet tomorrow morning, I’ll do it again. Because I think this is an imminently workable problem. The question is, do they have the willingness to come to a solution.”
Murphy and Kolluri planned a Friday morning news conference.
A few blocks from the Port Authority bus terminal, the NJ Transit train terminal was quiet, with an NJ transit worker in an orange hoody on hand to warn riders it was closed, Signs read: “service suspended.”
The South Amboy train station, an express stop on the NJ Transit rail line, was vacant. But the Waterway ferry that began service only 18 months ago from a waterside launching point that’s a 10-minute walk from the train station was busier than usual for its 6:40 a.m., 55-minute nonstop trip to Manhattan.
The ferry runs once an hour during the morning and evening commutes. With about three dozen people aboard, more than half the seats in the ferry’s lower deck were empty.
Murphy said it was important to “reach a final deal that is both fair to employees and at the same time affordable to New Jersey’s commuters and taxpayers.”
"Again, we cannot ignore the agency’s fiscal realities,” Murphy said.
The announcement came after 15 hours of nonstop contract talks, according to the union.
NJ Transit — the nation’s third-largest transit system — operates buses and rail in the state, providing nearly 1 million weekday trips, including into New York City. The walkout halts all NJ Transit commuter trains, which provide heavily used public transit routes between New York City’s Penn Station on one side of the Hudson River and communities in northern New Jersey on the other, as well as the Newark airport, which has grappled with unrelated delays of its own recently.
The agency had announced contingency plans in recent days, saying it planned to increase bus service, but warned riders that the buses would only add “very limited” capacity to existing New York commuter bus routes in close proximity to rail stations and would not start running until Monday.
However, the agency noted that the buses would not be able to handle close to the same number of passengers — only about 20% of current rail customers — so it urged people who could work from home to do so.
Earlier, even the thread of a strike caused travel disruptions. Amid the uncertainty, the transit agency canceled train and bus service for Shakira concerts Thursday and Friday at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
The parties met Monday with a federal mediation board in Washington to discuss the matter, and a mediator was present during Thursday’s talks. Kolluri said Thursday night that the mediation board has suggested a Sunday morning meeting to resume talks.
Wages have been the main sticking point of the negotiations between the agency and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen that wants to see its members earn wages comparable to other passenger railroads in the area. The union says its members earn an average salary of $113,000 a year and says an agreement could be reached if agency CEO Kris Kolluri agrees to an average yearly salary of $170,000.
NJ Transit leadership, though, disputes the union’s data, saying the engineers have average total earnings of $135,000 annually, with the highest earners exceeding $200,000.
Kolluri and Murphy said Thursday night that the problem isn’t so much whether both sides can agree to a wage increase, but whether they can do so under terms that wouldn’t then trigger other unions to demand similar increases and create a financially unfeasible situation for NJ Transit.
Congress has the power to intervene and block the strike and force the union to accept a deal, but lawmakers have not shown a willingness to do that this time like they did in 2022 to prevent a national freight railroad strike.
The union has seen steady attrition in its ranks at NJ Transit as more of its members leave to take better-paying jobs at other railroads. The number of NJ Transit engineers has shrunk from 500 several months ago to about 450.
Associated Press reporters Cedar Attanasio and Larry Neumeister in New York, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to this report.
An information screen informing commuters of the rail service suspension, due to the strike by Union members from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, inside Newark Penn Station on Friday, May 16, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
An information screen informing commuters of the rail service suspension, due to the strike by Union members from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, inside Newark Penn Station on Friday, May 16, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
An empty PATH train platform with an information screen informing commuters of the rail service suspension, due to the strike by Union members from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, inside Newark Penn Station on Friday, May 16, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
Union members from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen form a picket line outside the NJ Transit Headquarters on Friday, May 16, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
An electronic display advises commuters of NJ Transit service disruptions at the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
An NJ Transit train pulls into the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
An electronic display advises commuters of potential NJ Transit service disruptions at the Secaucus Junction station in Secaucus, N.J., Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Union members from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen form a picket line outside the NJ Transit Headquarters on Friday, May 16, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
Union members from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen form a picket line outside the NJ Transit Headquarters on Friday, May 16, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
