This is kind of out of nowhere, but I was thinking today you are prodded and evaluated for five years, including your recruitment, then you graduate and bam its done. That is the crazy thing about college athletics. You put your heart and soul into kids as coaches for the time being, you critique and congratulate them, you light them up and build them up, then their time comes and they just move on. I guess that is the way of the world, but it seems sort of bizarre to me. I think as a coach hopefully you can build a strong enough relationship with your kids that when they move into the real world, you still care and are involved in their real life.
I’ve been thinking more and more about what I want to do after I am done wrestling and done with school. I never thought I would want to coach, but if the right opportunity came about I think I would have a hard time turning it down. I think that has lended me some extra motivation this year as I need some solid credentials to me attractive for hiring as a college coach. We will see what happens.
Anthony, Coaches do stay in contact with their wrestlers. I am still in touch with wrestlers that I had back in 1957 -1959. I’ve even had a veteran of Vietnam thank me for keeping him alive during a fire fight there. You lose touch with some, but a lot of them stay in your mind and heart forever. One of my former state champions (1966) thanked me and wrestling for winning his battle against cancer just a couple years ago. We don’t forget you. Wrestlers are a very different and loyal breed.