Wrestling | September 15, 2026
Celebrate the entire Class XIV at the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and Dinner on Friday, September 25. Tickets are still available. to register and learn more.
ON THE PLAQUE: One of the most accomplished wrestlers in program history, he earned NCAA All-America honors twice and captured the 2000 EIWA Championship at 174 pounds. The 1998 Ivy League Rookie of the Year and a two-time First Team All-Ivy selection, finished his career with 109 victories, ranking among Penn's all-time leaders. A three-time team captain, he was equally distinguished in the classroom, earning two Academic All-Ivy honors, two NWCA All-Academic selections, and CoSIDA Academic All-District recognition. He won the Class of 1915 Trophy in 2002, an annual honor bestowed upon the male senior student-athlete who best exemplifies outstanding qualities in athletics, academics, and leadership.
By Terry Toohey
Penn wasn't on Rick Springman's radar early in his high school career, even though he lived less than 25 miles from the university in the western suburbs of Philadelphia. It wasn't until he was going into his junior year at Norristown Area High School that Penn came into the picture.
That's when then Quakers wrestling coach
Roger Reina C'84 WEV '05 began to put out some feelers about Springman, who was one of the top wrestlers in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania at the time.
Springman's father, also named Rick, became aware of Penn's interest in his son and decided to do a little digging. The elder Springman looked at the roster and recognized two of the names on the list, brothers Brett W'00 and Clint Matter C'97 W'97.
They were the sons of Upper Darby great and PIAA champion Andy Matter, who went on to become the first two-time national champion at Penn State. The elder Springman was impressed that the elder Matter thought of Penn enough to send both of his sons there.
"I remember sitting in the kitchen with my dad and talking about maybe we should look at Penn," Springman said. "At the time I was more inclined to go farther away but the prestige of Penn from an academic and athletic standpoint was too much to pass up."
Arizona was one of the schools Springman thought about attending until he took a visit to Penn.
"I went down there in the fall and met some of the guys who would become my teammates and my mentors," Springman said. "I was just blown away by the quality of the people and how brilliant they were and how good of athletes that they were, the quality of the coaching and the camaraderie of the team. It was a mission-driven team. I went for a day-and-a-half and I knew that's where I belonged. After that I canceled all my other recruiting trips.
"I always had a long-term view of things. I knew wrestling wasn't going to last forever. I knew academics was the reason I was going to college. Over the summer of my junior year, I got to know Coach Reina better because he was associated with the junior nationals. I was encouraged to do an early commit to help my chances of getting into the school and fortunately I was accepted."
Springman went on to become a Penn man through and through, and one of the finest wrestlers in the history of the program. Springman earned his Bachelor of Science and Engineering in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics from Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science in 2002 and went on to receive his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics in 2009. Springman was a two-time Academic All-Ivy and two-time NWCA All-Academic selection.
On the mat, Springman was one of the best to ever do it in a Penn singlet. He won 109 matches in his career, which ranks eighth in program history and is tied for second for pins in a season (11 in 1999-00). Springman was a two-time NCAA semifinalist, two-time All-American and four-time NCAA qualifier. He was also a four-time Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA) finalist, winning the title at 174 pounds in 2000. He also was the second wrestler in the more than 120-year history of the program to be named a team captain three times and was a USA Wrestling Freestyle All American and World Team Trials place winner.
Springman also served as a volunteer assistant coach at Penn while working on his doctoral degree. And he's still involved with the sport. Springman resides in Media with his wife, Laura and sons Robbie and Sam, and daughter Alexandra. He helps out with Media Youth Wrestling where his sons are involved with the program.
"When you start something at nine years old it becomes part of your DNA," Springman said. "I travel all over the world, fly overnight to go to a meeting and people say, 'Oh, that's so hard.' But once you've wrestled everything else in life is easy."
Add all that together and it's easy to see why Springman earned a spot in the Penn Athletics Hall of Fame Class XIV, his second Hall of Fame in three years. He was inducted into the EIWA Hall of Fame in 2023.
"This is a great honor to be inducted into the Hall of Fame along with some other Penn wrestlers who have also been inducted," Springman said. "It's very humbling."
Springman's success was not a surprise. He still ranks as one of the finest wrestlers in Norristown history. He's seventh in career wins (149) and second in career winning percentage (.909), according to
pa-wrestling.com. He was a three-time PIAA medal winner, claiming the state title at 152 pounds as a senior, placing third at that weight class as a junior and fourth at 145 pounds as a sophomore. He was the first PIAA champion Reina successfully recruited.
"He was an absolutely dominating wrestler, punishing, in a positive way," Reina said.
Springman got into wrestling through his father, who wrestled at Marple Newtown High School for two years before transferring to Long Branch High School in New Jersey. He and his father would wrestle in the family room and his father wanted to get him involved in the sport when he was seven or eight but his mother was reluctant to have him start that young.
His father eventually convinced his mother to let Springman start wrestling when he was nine. That's when he joined the West Norriton Golden Eagles, a youth program run by brothers Steve and Mark Harner, two legendary coaches in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
"I really grew to like wrestling," Springman said. "Although some of the older guys gave me a pretty good whooping, I handled myself pretty well. I remember Mark Harner telling my father after the second week that I was going to take my licks but in a couple of years I would be beating all of those guys. He saw that I had some talent there."
It was the culture of the sport, the intensity and physical nature of the competition and the endurance and technique it took to be successful, especially against elite opponents, that Springman loved most about wrestling.
Those qualities served him well when he got to Penn, where he got to train with the likes of fellow Penn Hall of Famers Brandon Slay W'98, Brett Matter and Yoshi Nakamura W'02.
"I trained a lot with Brett Matter my freshman year," Springman said. "We had some battles. The wrestling room had a door and I remember one time we hit the door and finished wrestling outside in the hallway. I overlapped for a year with Brandon Slay. He ended up becoming an Olympic champion. A lot of the coaches were very good wrestlers, too. We had a very tough, competitive room."
That competitive spirit was born out of the culture of the wrestling program and the University. Springman called it the Greek ideal of mind, body and soul. He said that the focus of the program and the University was to be physically fit while competing at a high level in both athletics and academics.
"The level of academics was intense," Springman said. "Norristown High School was a great school and I still believe that. When I went there, I was in all advanced placement classes.
"My first year at Penn was a real challenge. The level of competition in the classroom and the level of smarts and background was unbelievable. A lot of the folks had gone to high-end preparatory schools where they had tutors. It was really a wakeup call for me. I had to step up my game. My first year I did okay. I figured out how to study, which I really didn't have to do in high school."
"The University prepares you for life. You can't come out of Penn without wanting to be an inventor or an entrepreneur because that's the culture at the school."
Penn has led him to where Springman is now as the President of Holtec International, an energy company that specializes in the design and manufacture for parts to nuclear reactors. He leads the company's global nuclear business and growth strategy, reporting to CEO and Executive Chairman Kris Singh MSE '69, Ph.D. '72, a former member of Penn's Board of Trustees. Springman is also responsible for the SMR-300 delivery program and oversees capital planning and investor engagements, according to his biography on the company website. He joined the company in 2009 and has contributed to its global growth, technological advancements and strategic direction.
"I really had a great experience in my undergraduate and doctoral degree at Penn," Springman said. "I really feel indebted to the University for everything it has given me."
