Marsteller named USA Wrestling Athlete of the Week
The federation cited his 8-6 win over 2025 World champion and 2024 Olympian Georgios Kougioumtsidis.
Chance Marsteller is USA Wrestling's Athlete of the Week after his RAF debut. The federation pointed to the result itself, an 8-6 win over Georgios Kougioumtsidis, a 2025 World champion and a 2024 Olympian. That is the kind of scalp that turns a debut into a headline, and it came earlier in Marsteller's first trip through the RAF format.
USA Wrestling framed it as an entrance, not an upset footnote. The post said Marsteller "made his RAF debut in style," and the two lines of resume it attached to Kougioumtsidis, reigning World champ and Olympian, do the rest of the work. Two points was the margin.
Why the nod matters
Athlete of the Week goes out weekly and it is not a ranking, but the federation choosing a RAF result says something about where the promotion sits in the American freestyle calendar right now. Marsteller did not need a Final X bracket or a World team spot to get the spotlight. He needed one match against a name the rest of the world already knows.
For Marsteller, the win is the argument. He walked into a new stage against a wrestler who won a World title in 2025 and wrestled at the Paris Olympics in 2024, and he came out the other side by two.
Nobody has said what is next for him on the RAF schedule. The federation's post covers the award and the result and nothing beyond that.
What to watch is whether RAF books Marsteller again quickly and against whom. A debut win over a World champion tends to shorten the line to the next big name.
Chance Marsteller made his RAF debut in style with an 8-6 victory over 2025 World champion and 2024 Olympian Georgios Kougioumtsidis