St. Pius X senior Kyler Kuhn wrestled his last match at the Class 4 Missouri State High School Wrestling Championships last February.
The then-junior edged Blue Springs’ heavyweight Carter Atagi 1-0 in the semifinals before he defeated Jackson senior Brysen Wessell 3-2 in an ultimate tiebreaker as he was able to escape to clinch his second state title of his career during the title bout of the 285-pound weight class.
As a sophomore, he took down Zyan Knollmeyer of Helias Catholic 5-3 to win his first state championship in the class 3 heavyweight bracket.
The talented senior established himself as one of the best 285-pound wrestlers in the United States. He could have followed in the footsteps of his older brother Rylan, who was a two-time state champion and trained in wrestling at the Olympic Trainer Center in Colorado Springs, Co. for his senior season.
However, Kyler Kuhn is taking a different path. He’s hanging up his wrestling shoes and is solely concentrated on football for his senior season at St. Pius X. He’s a four-star recruit as an offensive lineman according to 247sports.com and committed to play for the University of Missouri in June.
He said he is going to move from tackle to a guard for his senior season with the Warriors then will transition to be a center for Mizzou.
“The transition shouldn’t be too tough,” Kuhn said. “The only difference is you’re snapping the ball when you’re playing center, but it’ll be fun and something that I’ll be ready for.
“They just saw with my build. I’m not the tallest offensive lineman, but they think they saw a lot of my leadership skills to command the offense and to command the offensive line. I also have a center build.”
Kuhn received offers from multiple blueblood programs including Penn State, Oregon, Florida, Tennessee and even the defending national champion Indiana Hoosiers, but ultimately chose Missouri.
“I just felt like that was the most safe-based team,” Kuhn said. “That was something that was important to me. And it was somewhere I knew I was going to be developed at the O-line position by the coaches, and the culture there was great.
“The recruitment process has been going on since halfway through my freshman year. A lot went into it. It was a tough decision, but I am happy with the school I chose.”
Before making his decision to play football at Mizzou, Kuhn was considering wrestling and playing football in college. Colleges like Rutgers, Air Force Academy (where Rylan currently wrestles) and North Carolina offered for him to compete at both, but he decided against it.
“For a long time, I wanted to do both,” Kuhn said, “but I think that’s something that’s probably funner to think about than it is to actually do because it’d be hard to be elite at both sports, doing them at the same time in college.”
Kuhn has had a successful football career with St. Pius so far. He helped lead the Warriors to a Class 5 state quarterfinal appearance in 2024 as a sophomore and he’s a two-time, first-team, all-state selection.
This year, he’s hoping to help the Warriors win a state title.
“I think all the seasons have gone pretty well, but they’ve all been leading up to this year because I think this is the year that we can really go out and possibly win a state championship, which would be awesome,” Kuhn said. “
But I’d probably say everything’s got better since my freshman year, just improvement as an athlete, everything like run blocking, pass pro, footwork, hand speed, all that has definitely gotten better since I started.”
Recently, Kuhn has been training at boxing at Champ Fit KC, and it’s helped him get better with his technique as an offensive lineman. He compared throwing a punch in boxing to punching a defensive lineman with a block.
He said wrestling also helped him get better as an offensive lineman as there is some crossover between the two sports.
“I learned how to control my leverage in wrestling, and that helps a lot on the offensive line, just helping to move 300, 400-pound guys across the line of scrimmage,” Kuhn said, “And then football, you have to have good footwork to be an offensive lineman. That really translated into my wrestling game and just having good footwork when I wrestle. So they both helped each other a lot.”
Kuhn said he will graduate after the first semester at St. Pius and enroll at Mizzou early, so he won’t be wrestling for his senior season. He said the sport has been a big influence on his athletic career and said he will miss it.
“It was a tough decision to make, and it’s kind of been sad,” Kuhn said. “It started to hit me when I got closer to the state wrestling tournament. And yeah, Leaving the sport after doing it for so long is kind of sad, but honestly, this summer, boxing has kind of filled that void for me a little bit, just to get another physical contact sport there.”