Tips for a Rookie Coach

By Warren Applegate

If you're a new high school wrestling coach here are some tips that you might find helpful:

1.  Get a feeder program established.  If you can't get one in the winter, get kids into your spring freestyle club (you have to have one if you want to be successful).

2.  Get a organized strength program at the school established where your wrestlers lift 3 or 4 days a week year round.  It is easier to coach guys with big arms.

3.  Don't strengthen the schedule yet.  I made the mistake of getting us in every tough tournament.  Our two best kids placed, the rest were lucky to win a match.

4.  You have to create a family atmosphere.  We hold a fall social where all of the wrestlers families are invited.  We have volleyball and swimming available to the kids, while the coaching staff talks to the parents about wrestling.  95 percent have no history in the sport.

5.  Duwane Miller who was a NCAA champ at OU took over the Kapaun-Mt.Carmel team in Wichita in 1974, which had never done better than 20th in state, in his first year they took 4th, the next 4 years they won state and never took worst than 3rd again under his leadership.  Duwane said you can't have many rules, because you have to enforce rules, instead have principles that you try to get the team to live and wrestle by.  He did have one IRONCLAD rule;  if you miss a practice (whether it was excused or unexcused you had to make up the conditioning before you wrestled in competition).  He had about a 20-minute conditioning session that was held after practice for those who needed to make up conditioning.  Duwane said he didn't have the greatest or stronger athletes. How they beat people was by technique and conditioning.

6.  I would schedule one tough tournament next year, but make sure it is a line bracket, not a dual meet or pool tournament.  You don't want kids losing 5 or 6 matches in 2 days.  Plus, a line bracket tournament helps psychologically to prepare a kid for a regional and state tournament.

7.  Get someone who is good at fundraising.  You need certain items for the program that won't be included in the school budget.  Summer wrestling.  I always held a 2-month 2 nights a week high school mat wrestling program.  My theory is you spend all spring working on takedowns during freestyle, but do very little mat wrestling that helps for high school.  You won't get a whole lot of participation, but if 4-6 kids do it they'll be on the road to becoming dominant wrestlers, and will become coaches and role models for the younger kids.

8.  Make friends with the football coaches, show them the skills you teach that will help with football.

9.  Tell the parents and football coaches that you do not advocate weight cutting.  Instead that you promote strength training and proper diets.  Kids make kids cut weight.  Until you have a strong team kids won't need to cut weight to make the team.  Only the most dedicated wrestlers who have dreams of winning state and going on to college will make that sacrifice.  However, when you have a strong team, kids will cut weight in order to make the starting lineup.

10.  Keep tabs on them academically.  I didn't send out grade checks, instead every week I was talking to kids about how they were doing.  If they had a problem I'd offer suggestions.  Sometimes I even excused a kid from practice, because if he's not eligible to wrestle he's no good to me.

11.  I established an award that is based on the following: 50% is your first semester's GPA, 25% is the team points you score during the season prior to the state tournament, and 25% is the team points you score at the state tournament.  I had a permanent plaque made with the winner each year engraved on it, the winner each year gets his own smaller plaque.  I gave them a gift certificate for 2 at about $100 to a local steakhouse and told them if you can't get a good looking date with this you need help.  We upgraded last year to all expenses paid for a trip to the NCAA Wrestling Tournament: airfare, hotel room, and tickets.  Some parents kicked in the additional funds.  I have a scoreboard for the wrestling room so they can track how they are doing in the competition.  Remember a pin scores twice as many team points in a dual meet.

12.  I give out t-shirts with Mark Schultz's picture of him pinning the Turkish wrestler in the 1984 Olympics. (I took the photo).  If they get 10 pins on the varsity I give them one of these shirts, which has the saying LEAN MEAN PINNING MACHINE over the photo of Mark Schultz.  Technical Falls do not count!

13.  Find a girl who is really good at singing the national anthem acapella.

14.  I printed up programs listing the starting lineup for each team at dual meets along with the scoring system.  I'd call the coach for his lineup the day before.  These were handed to the fans as they gave their ticket to get into the gym.

15.  Have someone call in or e-mail the score to the newspaper, preferably match by match line score, not just the team score.  If a kid sees his name in the paper for winning, it really motivates them.