National Champion and Rutgers wrestling's all-time wins leader Anthony Ashnault begins his second season on staff as an assistant coach for the 2022-23 season. In his first season on the bench in 2021-22, the Scarlet Knights finished with two All-Americans for the seventh consecutive season, their most dual wins (16) since the 2012-13 season and their highest final ranking in the final NWCA Coaches Poll (14) since 2017.
The only four-time All-American and three-time Big Ten Champion in program history under head coach Scott Goodale, Ashnault wrestled for the Scarlet Knights from 2014-19 and capped his collegiate career with an individual title at the 2019 NCAA Championships in Pittsburgh. The South Plainfield, New Jersey, native is also a two-time Rutgers University graduate after he earned his bachelor's in planning and public policy in 2018 and his master's in global sports business in 2020.
Ashnault's collegiate resume is lengthy, as the South Plainfield, New Jersey native produce a program record 123 wins during his time as a student-athlete "On the Banks". Ashnault went 32-0 as a senior during the 2018-19 campaign en route to 149-pound NCAA and Big Ten titles, as he became the program's first ever Hodge Trophy finalist with a 59% bonus rate that season.
Competing at both 141 and 149 pounds as a Scarlet Knight, Ashnault secured All-America laurels four times, earned three Big Ten individual titles and accounted for 296 dual points to help Rutgers rack up 44 dual victories and 18 against Big Ten Conference opponents. Ashnault also secured an individual title at the prestigious Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invitational and placed three times at the Midlands Championships.
As a representative of USA Wrestling, Ashnault continues to compete against the world's best, most recently wrestling at the 2021 U.S. Olympic Team Trials this past April in Fort Worth, Texas. Ashnault secured his trials' spot last year with his freestyle gold medal at the Pan American Championships in Ottawa, Canada.
