Shayne Van Ness spent exactly 13 minutes and 34 seconds wrestling competitively last fall. A November knee injury cost him the balance of his sophomore season, forcing him into a mental battle with himself the rest of the way. 

During his nearly yearlong recovery, Penn State’s powerful 149-pounder fine-tuned his perspective and altered his approach to prime what he hopes will be a championship comeback. 

“I’ve had a little bit of practice with this and I found that I always come back stronger than before,” Van Ness said. “I think this one was more a physical thing and it just took longer than any of my other recoveries, but I look at it as training. I can’t be in the room wrestling, but I can be training mentally, continuing to do things that are difficult for me.”

At first, that was the waiting game. Waiting to have surgery. Waiting to walk. Waiting to run. Waiting to renew workouts. 

He was months away from an actual return to the mat, and as the weather turned frigid in Happy Valley, Van Ness grew weary constantly looking forward to a far-off future.

“In the beginning, I was getting really frustrated with the process and how slow it was,” Van Ness said. “When I stopped looking at the big picture, days started to string together a lot faster. And I continue to do that now, just focusing on what my goals are today, going out there and achieving them, and coming in and getting better.”

As his teammates prepared to chase national championships, Van Ness refocused on recovery and rehab.

Once he was cleared for basic workouts, he tried to make them as hard on himself as possible. 

“It might be something as simple as walking a mile,” Van Ness said. “And that might be the equivalent of doing a full wrestling practice for me at that time.”

Fast forward to just last month, and Penn State coaches were feeling pretty confident Van Ness would be ready to begin the season. Cael Sanderson has seen Van Ness come back strong before.

As a recruit, he joined the Nittany Lions with a shoulder issue that took some time to recover. Despite the slow start to his collegiate career, Van Ness broke out as a redshirt freshman, going 24-7 with a third-place finish at NCAAs.

“He had to rehab an injury a lot of (his freshman) year, so he didn’t get a lot of time on the mat,” Sanderson said. “And then he came out and did an awesome job and had a brilliant kind of a year and just kept improving and then really wrestled great at the nationals and just kind of continued in that upward trend.”

So Van Ness’s dominant 16-4 major over Ty Watters in the NWCA All-Star Classic to start this season wasn’t much of a surprise?

“Jumping into a high-level match right away after having not competed in a long time, you’re hopeful that he’ll just go and be himself and do his thing,” Sanderson said. “But you never know until it happens. So yeah, we were really happy that he went out there and competed with confidence against a very good opponent in a big match.”

Younger versions of Van Ness would’ve spent time going over all the possible scenarios and positions he might find himself in against Watters, last season’s Big 12 champ and fourth-place finisher at NCAAs.

This, mentally recalibrated Van Ness, did none of that. He recalled a tip from former Penn Stater and UFC fighter Bo Nickal.

“When he tries to think about how a fight is going to go, it doesn’t go that way,” Van Ness said. “And then you have to scramble to put it together, so being in the moment and letting whatever was going to happen happen and accepting it and then just wrestle through it.”

That’s what he did against Watters, and what he’ll do the rest of the way.

“I didn’t realize how much I missed it,” Van Ness said. “I know I missed it a lot, but I just felt like that’s what I do. The dominating, powerful style. That’s who I am. That’s how I want to wrestle every time.”