My parents’ greatest fear when I was in High School was that I’d become a wrestling coach. I laughed at that fear. At the time, I would have never thought that I one day their fear would become a reality. I revered my coaches, but I had no intention of becoming one. I became one by accident. I became one because I read a book by John Irving in my last year of college, and felt that I needed to wrestle again. I was living at home, so I stopped by my old high school wrestling program. It had been over five years since I graduated. There was a different coach and different kids. I came in as a practice buddy.
Very quickly I realized the gift and real pinnacle of coaching: it’s the immediate feeling that overcomes you when you see someone doing something wrong, fixing it and seeing them transformed into a better wrestler. I came to that room to wrestle, but I returned to help the wrestlers. At first, it was once a week, then twice and soon enough I was there everyday and weekend, waking up at five am to take JV wrestlers to a tournament to feel the exhilaration when the skinny freshman would win a triple overtime match.
That was the last year of San Dieguito wrestling. The head coach and I exasperated over the treatment of the program by the admin moved to a neighboring high school to help the La Costa Canyon team. Once again I came in as little more than a wrestling body and quickly I saw giving small pointers that transformed the wrestlers. I wrestled the best in the state in that room, the likes of Bryan Grubbs, Tim Randall, Ian Baker, Ryan Williams. I continued to train and help at UCSD, and later in Tel Aviv where we ran the only American wrestling club outside of the United States.
In 2021, my wife and I moved to the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego. It was the end of COVID and I decided to offer to help the coach at Patrick Henry. The head coach just took over the program and he needed help. Just as with San Dieguito, I came in and immediately became hooked. I was there every day and at every tournament. I was making videos, writing articles, and keeping track of stats. I wrote notes for the wrestlers and would go over the things to work on after the matches. I argued with the head coach about many things. A little in the first year and then a lot in the second year and in the third, my arguments landed me the job. The coach was leaving and I would inherit the program. I had big plans. I had big problems.
When I started coaching at San Dieguito there were no classes to take, no hoops to jump through. Today there are classes on concussion and heat stroke and many other safety classes to take. And none of them prepare you for the work you signed up for. You have to manage the staff, and you have to worry about the wrestlers showing up, about them acting correctly, and their nutrition. You now show up to every practice and you have to be there early to clean the mats and stay late to clean up the wrestling room. You’re now planning the matches, signing up for the matches, raising money for the matches, signing up for grants, and buying shirts. You’re dealing with parents and admin, with other coaches and officials. The job balloons into dozens of hours and never ends regardless of the season. You’re failing every day no matter how hard you work and you have the weight of the program on your shoulders at all times. The weight is heavy because it is the weight of parents’ most precious possession: their children.
You build up the program and you care deeply about every wrestler. You know their names, you know their styles and sometimes you get to know them on a deeper level too. But as the program grows, you can only know so many people. To make a quality program you have to have kids and youth programs. You have to have tournaments and camps. You have to chase down the coaches who didn’t pay for the tournament and the wrestlers who didn’t pay or didn’t return the uniforms. You have to be there for weight lifting in the off-season and the open mats.
In my first year, my wife gave birth to our first child. In my third, our second was born during CIF’s. I’m not proud to say that I was in the hospital doing double duty: caring for my wife and keeping track of Track. My life was chaos held together by gum and shoe string. And yet we somehow made it through the three years of first child and the first year of the second.
Wrestling is a thankless sport. Very few choose it as their primary sport, they don’t really care for it when they start, most just do it because they have nothing else and their parents could care less as well. And that would seem like a problem but the bigger problem is when they do care, and begin to tell you how to train them, when to train them and point out all the things you do wrong. And they are right to do both.
No one says someone has to care about something because you do. If you become a coach, you are a public figure, community knows you and introduces you as a coach. That’s not a negative or a curse, it is a responsibility and a privilege. It is a privilege that makes you better, every day. I’m a better human because I’m a coach and every day, my goal is to create better humans.
Is coaching wrestling the best job or the worst job? It’s a terrible job for your time with family. It is a terrible job for your time with friends. It is a terrible job for money. But it makes you a better person, it allows you to help young people become better versions of themselves: physically and mentally. And isn’t that the kind of meaningful job we are all after?
Next time you step on the mat, shake your coach’s hand, he’s there for you or your children more than you will ever know.
Henry-Wrestling 