Managerial Perspectives of Coaching Wrestling

by Chris Vondruska

3/6/08

Introduction

What are the key ingredients to a thriving organization? Is it the capital required

to start them? Is it the facilities in which they operate? Or is it the equipment used

everyday? Both my research in sport studies and my experience in the sport of wrestling

have allowed me to understand how useless these material resources would be without

the sufficient human resources. In a business setting human resources are made up of

employees and their managers; business can only use these material resources (capital,

facilities, and equipment) with their employees and managers who convert them into

wealth.1 In a sport setting (such as wrestling) the human resources are the athletes and

coaches; these coaches resemble managers in the sense that their major function is to

manage their athletes. In most organizations sports or not, human resources are a unique

resource and are all that matter because it is the people that make the organizations run.

Without the athletes and coaches, the facilities and equipment would be useless.

Furthermore, with athletes and coaches that lack the characteristics required for such

positions, the activity would go nowhere.

Former head football coach at The Ohio State University, Woody Hayes, was

fond of the saying