Beyond the Mat - Andrew Murano

We sat down across from one another in the Steinman College Center for our interview and the first words out of Andrew Murano's mouth were, "It's so great you're doing this, we appreciate everything you're doing. Is this something you enjoy?"

Of course, the answer is yes. I actually love writing, particularly when the subject is one that I am invested in and passionate about. Writing for the wrestling team certainly qualifies. However, the point is not that I love writing, nor is it to toot my own horn so to speak. Rather, the point is to illustrate what kind of person Murano is.

Sitting down to talk about him and for him to speak about his accomplishments, the first words out of Murano's mouth concerned my happiness and whether or not I enjoyed what I was doing. His personality lends itself to interaction with others. Working with and pleasing people is Murano's strong suit.

I suggested the term "people person," and Murano seemed to take a liking to it right off the bat.

"I'm definitely big into interacting with people," Murano said. "I'm always about saying hi to people on the street and even if I've never met them, just getting to know them and saying hi to them. I like that classification. I'm definitely a people person. That's kind of something I want to hone in on later after college. I haven't really found that profession yet, but I'd like to find something that suits my personality as being a people person."

Murano, who is in the middle of his second season wrestling for F&M, has always placed a high emphasis on charity, pleasing others, and working to ensure that everyone who crosses his path leaves feeling a little bit better. Talking with him just for those 15 minutes, he struck me as another Colin Ely. In other words, Murano takes pride in hearing that others left a conversation with him feeling better than they did before they began speaking with him.

Coming from a Jesuit high school, Murano has always made charity and service a primary part of his life.

"I actually did a lot more charity in high school than I do now, which is probably not a good thing," Murano said. "I should definitely get back into that. Being in an Jesuit environment, they really hone in on being a man for others. I spent time at soup kitchens. On Saturdays, our [school] cafeteria would become a soup kitchen for the homeless, where they could sleep in the cafeteria. It was an overnight thing. I would always show up to that a couple times a month."

"For my senior year, I worked at a school for disabled children," he added. "That really touched me. Every Monday, I would go there and I would work with the children there. That's what I've done and I know it's not a huge amount of charity, but it's something I really want to do in life."

"I want to help people."

It's clear Murano is one who wants to make a difference. His own personal happiness is linked to the happiness of those around him in some way. Although my time with him was short, I got the sense he was genuinely interested in whether or not I took an interest in writing for the wrestling team. It was obvious at least to me that he was happy when I said yes.


While many people are specifically concerned with how to succeed on a personal level and what the most direct route to that success is, Murano is seemingly more concerned with how to be successful while at the same time helping others and leaving a smile on their faces at the same time.

This is not to say Murano isn't ambitious. When asked what he wanted his mark to be when he graduates, it was relatively short. All he wants is to be an All-American, make Dean's List every semester, and know everybody on campus.

"In terms of wrestling, I want to be an All-American," Murano said. "I want to do something big with wrestling. I want to be the start of something big. In terms of other aspects, I want to keep my friends from F&M, I love my friends from F&M. I want to be known on campus. I want to do well in school, I want to be on Dean's List from now on."

"That's kind of it."

As a wrestler, the sport has defined Murano's life. He only began wrestling as a freshman in high school at Xavier in New York, and it has helped mold and develop Murano. He has benefited from the sport and it's clear he appreciates everything the sport has given him.

"To be tough," Murano said when asked wrestling had taught him. "The more work and more preparation you put into something the easier something is going to be. Life is not easy. Wrestling dictates what you do on an off the mat. It all affects you on the mat when the spotlight is on you."

"Wrestling really has been a sport that defines me. I just have to be tough and to prepare, prepare, prepare. It has taught me to work hard, work hard in everything I do. Those are the two things. Work hard and be tough."

At F&M, Murano has loved his time as a Diplomat. Being a division one wrestler is something he views as a privilege and appreciates the opportunity that has been afforded him.

"I love being a division one athlete," Murano said. "It's like, that's kind of the main thing. If I am going to wrestle, I'm going to do it at the highest level. I love being a wrestler and that persona that comes with it. It's just been something that has defined me. I would love to be known around campus as a wrestler."

He enjoys being well known. Murano is at the center of everything and he's ambitious, but he has a healthy dose of reality, compassion, and  humility to accompany that nature. While it's difficult to tell where exactly Murano will end up, he will likely end up somewhere successful.

I could write 5,000 words about Murano and his personality. But all you really need to know is at the very beginning of this article. When he asked me whether or not I loved writing, Murano showed he is eager to please. He wants nothing more than to be well known and to contribute to all of their lives.

When I interviewed Ely a month ago, the most profound point we discussed was that Ely wants to leave every conversation knowing that the other person was feeling better at the end of the conversation. It's an admirable quality that far too few people embody.

Ely will be graduating next semester. But his personality and his mission will be carried on. Murano loves wrestling and he loves people. He says he wants leave an impact on the F&M community on every level.

He's well on his way.

Reflections at the Half: Five Things I've Learned

If you read my column "Hitting the Road with F&M Wrestling" published on November 21, you probably picked up on the fact that I'm new to this sport:

I knew nothing of wrestling when I first arrived at F&M. My small high school of just over 300 kids didn’t have enough interest to support a wrestling program. As far as I knew, the sport was more or less what my best friend and I did on “play dates” when we were six and seven years old. Any strategy, planning, or training that went into the preparation for a wrestling match was lost on me. It was a sport I would oftentimes hear about, but could never see.

As the end of the semester slowly approaches and the beginning of winter break creeps closer, I decided to take a moment and reflect on five things I've learned about this sport. Even though this is not the half way point of the season for the wrestling team, last week's match against Navy was more or less my half way point. I will miss several matches over the break, and will have the opportunity to see seven more when I return.

Although I went to many wrestling matches last year, I never picked up the nuances of the sport. It wasn't until this season that I truly began to pick up all the details. When Matt Latessa and the coaching staff approached me about the opportunity to write about the wrestling team over the course of the season, I figured I could use my writing skills to get by and learn the sport on the fly. So far, this season has gone just like I thought it would.

Below are the five biggest things about wrestling I have learned thus far. I have also included my reflections on each point.

1. Wrestling is a thinking man's game.

It's pretty easy to tell I had little appreciation for the intricacies of the sport when I first started this job just by reading the excerpt above. If you had asked me four or five months ago what the objective of a wrestling match was, I probably would have responded by saying, "To get your opponent to the ground and to keep him there." I would have said it with little understanding or knowledge of the sport.

In a way, that's right. After all, when two wrestlers square off, the goal is to pin the opponent or to keep him on the ground. The difference is that I had no appreciation of the process and I did not possess the understanding to truly comprehend what was happening before my eyes every time I watched a match unfold.

Wrestling is indeed a thinking man's game. A good wrestler will have just about every move thought out in advance and he will take every single one of his opponent's moves into account. Even those wrestlers who tend to be a bit more cavalier in their style are constantly thinking. At the division one level, wrestlers can't just expect to walk on to a mat and pummel their opponents into submission.

That's the crucial difference between freshmen and a seasoned veteran like Matt Fullowan. At the end of the day, a freshman could very well be more physically gifted than he, but, chances are, Fullowan has the mental edge. As a senior, he's seen it all. He knows all the tricks in the book. I'd be willing to bet Fullowan will win several matches this season because of his intelligence and his experience.

There are many other sports people tend to associate with intelligence and thinking. Wrestling is too often left out of the mix.

2. I finally know what a pin is

Believe it or not, I had not idea what constituted a pin when I first started this job. Now I know. Two shoulder blades to the mat. If I only got one thing out of this experience of writing about the F&M wrestling program for an entire season, this was it. After all, not knowing what a pin is would be like asking a football fan what a touchdown is, or a baseball player what it means to hit a home run.

In other words, it's a little embarrassing not to know, particularly when your with other wrestlers or fans of the sport. What is also a little tough to swallow is to go to an F&M-Campbell meet (like I did last year) as the sports editor of a college newspaper at a school with a wrestling team and have a five-year-old kid lecture you on the art of the pin.

Granted, that was the first wrestling match I had ever been to, so I am willing to cut myself a little slack. But regardless, I put learning the rules of the sport at the top of my list of things to accomplish. After all, wrestling is not just simply slugging it out with an opponent until one falls down. It's a far more intricate and complicated sport than many people realize (hence the little "thinking man's piece above). There are so many nuances to appreciate, and I'd like to learn as many as possible by the time this season concludes.

3. I can't imagine being in that good of shape.

I've played football, basketball, baseball, ice hockey, and have run marathons. Some of the greatest athletes in the world play these sports. However, after watching wrestling closely since the season began, I'm not sure there is a group of athletes that are collectively in better shape than wrestlers.

Could some of the athletes jump from their sport to wrestling? Possibly. The truly elite athletes in any sport can cross the boundaries between sports with relative ease. That is, after all, what makes them truly special. But collectively, from top to bottom, I'm not sure there is a sport that has more athletes who are in as close to perfect shape as they can humanly be. It's awfully impressive and is a fact that too often gets lost on people when they talk about the greatest athletes in the world.

4. Is there anything more exciting than good wrestling?

Admittedly, I am a football guy. When the New England Patriots won Super Bowl XXXVI on Adam Vinatieri's now famous field goal, I think that was the most excited I have ever been for a sports moment. But that was the championship game. The kick was for all the marbles. It was the biggest kick in franchise history.

Would I have as been excited about that field goal had it happened, say, in week 10 of the NFL regular season? I doubt it.

Now, thinking back to F&M's match with Navy last Friday. Watching Matt Fullowan's long drawn out affair with his opponent and then Colin Ely's impressive pin of his opponent was the most excited I have been at a sporting event in quite some time. Maybe this excitement comes from the fact that a wrestler has only a few minutes before he runs out of time, so there really is no "I'll get him during the next play" moments. It's now or never, and every move counts.

(Side note: This is another reason why wrestling is a thinking man's game. There is no such thing as a meaningless move in a wrestling match. If a wrestler screws up, he could get pinned. If he falls into a 4-0 hole, good luck digging out of it in the short amount of time he has. I'm not saying it's impossible to come back from such a deficit, but being down 4-0 or 4-1 midway through the second period with your opponent on your back makes it awfully hard to come back. On the flip side of the coin, the guy ahead can't stop thinking either. If he falls asleep and his opponent gets in one good move, he could be pinned. And then it's all over, no matter what the score is. For as much as wrestling demands of its athletes from a physical standpoint, a case can be made that it demands just as much mentally.)

5. Wrestlers are some of the most genuine, humble athletes I have ever met.

I will preface this observation by saying that this is not meant to be any kind of insult towards the athletes of any other sport. Nor am I saying that every single wrestler in the world is humble, down to earth, and approachable. But, on the whole, I do not think I have ever met a group of athletes more humble than wrestlers.

Maybe it's because they know this is the end of the road. Perhaps it is because they don't get all the media and fan attention and hype. It also may be that they know they'll never make millions wrestling no matter how good they are, so they simply wrestle because they love the sport that much.

The bottom line is this: I have yet to speak to a collegiate wrestler, at F&M or somewhere else, where I have left the conversation thinking he was pretentious, arrogant, full of himself, or all of the above. I genuinely believe that because division one wrestling is the pinnacle of the sport and that there aren't million of dollars waiting for them after college that wrestlers simply wrestle for the love of the sport. After all, is there another reason to work so hard and to get pummeled repeatedly? I certainly can't think of one.

In many other sports, kids see it as a get rich quick scheme or as a way to rocket themselves to fame. That option is not there for wrestlers. At the end of the day, division one wrestlers wrestle for the love of the sport. This makes them appreciative of the little time they do have to wrestle, and they are thankful for it.

Beyond the Mat - Eric Norgard

In a lot of ways, Eric Norgard is just like any of the other wrestlers on the F&M wrestling squad. Hard working, intelligent, and charismatic are all words and phrases that aptly describe Norgard.

At the same time, Norgard is definitely one who marches to his own beat, preferring to stand out as an individual rather than blend in with the rest of the crowd.

“I’ve kind of always been [an individual],” Norgard said. “When I got here as a freshman, I think that really started it, at least here. I always had my friends on the team, but I also always had my friends on my hall. If I ever needed to get away from it all [wrestling], I would just go hang out with them. But I don’t always need to be around people, and I actually enjoy it a lot sometimes.”

As a wrestler at F&M, Norgard has appreciated the simpler things that have come with being a wrestler. When asked what his favorite part about being on the team was, his answer essentially amounted to simply loving the fact he had the opportunity to wrestle after high school.

“I guess that I can say that I’m a division one wrestler, which really carries a lot weight,” Norgard said when asked what his favorite part about wrestling was. “I’ll be able to say that for the rest of my life.”

As the sole junior on F&M’s roster, Norgard will be in the unique position soon of being the only senior on the squad. Although being the only senior on the team next year will likely be a role that comes with a great deal of responsibility, it hasn’t fazed Norgard. In fact, the thought hardly ever crosses his mind.

“I haven’t really put a lot of thought into it yet,” Norgard said. “When I was a freshman, we had a class of three and the other two dropped out. It’s just something I’ve become used to. I don’t see it as a, I don’t think I’m supposed to be the one to set all the examples for everyone, I think I will, but it’s just not something I’m going to think of like that.”

Perhaps the reason behind Norgard’s calm, comfortable approach to his future role with the team comes from the support he already receives from the coaching staff.

“I think he’ll handle [the responsibility] well,” assistant coach Matt Greenberg said when asked about Norgard’s upcoming role with the team. “He’s not someone I ever have to worry about not showing up. He’s always there, always doing what you tell him. As far as an example of what you need to do or how you need to do it, there’s nobody I’d rather have doing that. I think he embodies what it take to balance everything.”

“I think he’s the perfect person to have if you can only have one senior.”

It didn’t take long for Greenberg to figure out what he had in Norgard. Ironically, that moment occurred during Norgard’s freshman year and involved him making a mistake rather than excelling on the mat or in the classroom.

“His freshman year, we went down to North Carolina for a match,” Greenberg said. “After we went through skin checks, he thought he had weighed in, but forgot he hadn’t weighed in officially. He sat down and started chugging a Gatorade. I said, ‘What are you doing? You can’t drink, you haven’t weighed in yet!’ He was three pounds over by the time he chugged his Gatorade, so he had to lose that weight in like thirty seconds.”

“He ran sprints and he was doing all kinds of crazy stuff [to lose the weight],” Greenberg continued. “Seeing him do all that, I knew this kid was legit. I knew he really wanted to make it work and he made it. He got out there and wrestled. Most kids would have been like, ‘Aw, I screwed up, I’m done. I can’t wrestle.’ He made it work though. I think that kind of embodies the kind of kid he is.”

“It was actually apple juice,” Norgard said, grinning as he began recounting the story. “I just started drinking and didn’t think anything of it and then I had this moment of sheer panic in the locker room and thought, ‘What did I just do?’ I started jump roping thinking I was going to lose the weight in two seconds. As soon as I realized that wasn’t going to work, I just found the nearest garbage can and, well, you know.”

This is just one of many examples of Norgard’s dedication to the wrestling team. He has developed a very personal bond with the program, and is thrilled to see it thriving in head coach Mike Rogers’ second season at the helm.

“It’s going to be weird next year because I’m going to be the only person who was here before Rogers so I’ll be the only one who has seen just how far this team has come,” Norgard said. “At the end of the year last year, we won four matches in a row. And this year, we have so many freshman doing incredible things just stepping on the mat for the first time at the college level. So I’m excited for the rest of the season and for next year, but once I graduate it will be crazy to see how far this thing can go.”

Off the mat, Norgard’s maintains his status as being a little different than almost everyone else. He has grown up loving the beach and the water, and has a tattoo of the beach. With a house on the Jersey Shore, Norgard has plenty of opportunity to get his fill of the water.

“[The beach] is definitely my place, where I like to be the most,” Norgard said. “Wrestling and surfing are just my two favorite things in the world to do. It’s the best.”

Although the junior doesn’t have to focus on what his life after college will be like for a little while, Norgard has a general feeling about what he would like to pursue after his collegiate career is over.

While emulating his father is towards the top of the list, Norgard is unsure about whether or not he wants to follow step for step in his father’s path.

“My main goal would be to own my own company and to work for myself,” Norgard said. “My Dad kind of does that now, he’s the vice president of his company. He worked his way up to get that job, he’s been at the same company for thirty plus years now. I don’t know if I’d like to start at the bottom like he did though.”

“I just gotta come up with that next great idea.”

An unassuming kid, it can sometimes be easy to lose Norgard in the crowd. But he’s anything but invisible when he steps on the mat or is in the locker room. There’s a reason Greenberg said if he could only have one senior next year, Norgard would be his guy. With all of his accomplishments, positive character traits, and his general attitude towards just about everything, it is easy to understand why Greenberg feels this way about Norgard.

While he certainly doesn’t blend in with any crowd, Norgard certainly fits in with just about everyone, the hallmark of an adaptable leader who can relate and connect with everyone around him.

Although F&M will be downsizing numbers wise in terms of senior leadership next season, the wrestling program will be in good hands.

Anatomy of a Coach - Matt Greenberg

What makes a great coaching tandem? Is it discipline? The ability to relate and connect with athletes? Possessing the aptitude to fully understand and comprehend the X’s and O’s of a sport? What about fundraising for a program or recruiting? Or, like a special recipe, is it some complex combination of all of the above, plus a little something extra?

Being the perfect coach at any level of competition is hard enough. What makes it even more difficult is finding that perfect complement—the assistant coach. The next two articles will take a look at head coach Mike Rogers and assistant coach Matt Greenberg to see what makes them click. In this two part series, the goal is to uncover what makes them so good at what they do and to discover why they work so well together. The following is part two in the series.

“I felt like I could make more of an impact here than selling sponsorships or chasing money,” assistant coach Matt Greenberg said when asked why he chose to come to F&M. Those who have worked for both the MLB and NBA and had begun to carve out a spot in an advertising firm don’t generally leave their jobs to become assistant wrestling coaches at small colleges in Pennsylvania. But to say Greenberg is just like most guys would be both inaccurate and shortsighted.

After he graduated from Cornell, Greenberg went to New York University to get a degree in sports marketing. Following his education, he had little difficulty finding some initial success in the field. After working for both of the aforementioned professional sports leagues, Greenberg went to a private company to help manage all of its sports advertising.

Although Greenberg’s early career path was one that many college graduates would give their eyeteeth to have, it still didn’t feel quite right. Even though he was certainly leaving an impact in the professional world, it wasn’t the type of influence he was hoping to have.

And that’s when he ended up in Lancaster.

“Andy Noel, who is the athletic director at Cornell and an F&M wrestling alum, said [F&M was] looking for an assistant coach,” Greenberg said. “I had missed wrestling incredibly doing what I was doing. So I said, ‘You know what? I think I’d be happier doing this.’ I interviewed and was able to make all the arrangements necessary.”

“I made the choice to come here and I think it was one of the best decisions I ever made.”

It was a roundabout way to get into coaching, and although it took him a little while to come full circle, the urge to get back into wrestling in some capacity and to have the opportunity to provide young men with a little guidance was just too much to pass up. At F&M, Greenberg has the chance to leave a mark on the development of all the wrestlers who compete in a Diplomat uniform, which is more rewarding to Greenberg than almost anything else.

“I’d be lying if I said that was all I cared about because we want to be successful as coaches,” Greenberg said. “We want to build this program. But [wrestling] changed my life and if we can do that for others…I don’t know. I don’t know where I would be if I didn’t wrestle. I don’t think I would have been at Cornell. Seventeen or eighteen-year-old kids, they don’t know what they’re doing. They change their minds fifty times. If you can be there for them when they need help and kind of teach them not to make mistakes or do the things you did right and were rewarded for, that’s what it’s all about.”

“I don’t have kids, so these are my kids. These are my brothers and my boys that I have to take care of.”

For Greenberg, wrestling has certainly left a meaningful impact on his own life, which is one of the biggest reasons he continues to remain so passionate and invested the sport. It opened doors for him that he believes would never have been opened otherwise, and it provided him guidance at times when it would have been very easy for him to fall off the bandwagon and get caught up in something that didn’t contribute to his future.

While it would probably be misleading to say wrestling was the only guiding light over the course of his adolescent and young adult life, he talks about it as if it were. The drive to succeed and the demanding nature of the sport itself kept Greenberg in line, and he credits the sport with helping him stay in line.

“I think wrestling kept me on track,” Greenberg said. “If I didn’t wrestle, I don’t know if I would have been as focused. It just kept me really grounded and it kept me focused on staying a good person and working towards my goals and accomplishing things that I set out to do. I was a little bit of a crazy kid, I was not an angel by any means. So I think that wrestling and being around a program that was really on the rise, I think really being a part of that helped keep me focused and on track to be successful in life.”

“It was my life, it was all I cared about,” Greenberg added. “Outside of my academics was being a good wrestler and accomplishing my goals. I was surrounded by people who had the same goals as I did so I didn’t want to be the one who didn’t get to go to the party. I wanted to be at nationals every year, I wanted to be an All-American, I wanted to be part of a championship team. I was given all of those opportunities at Cornell.”

Cornell has been perennially ranked in the top ten since Greenberg competed there, and it is one of the programs other schools around the country look towards when seeking a role model to base their rebuilding squad on. F&M is one of those schools, as the Diplomats are working to become relevant in the wrestling world.

Greenberg has worked with two head coaches since he arrived here at F&M, the current one being Mike Rogers. Rogers, who was an assistant coach at American, another wrestling powerhouse, before he came to F&M has found almost the perfect working partner in Greenberg. Their personalities match up together flawlessly, with both of them relying on one another to help complement their own respective strengths and weaknesses. It’s quite a tandem, with Rogers looking at Greenberg almost as like a co-head coach.

“Working with Matt has been great,” Rogers said. “He complements me in things I may be lacking skill wise, he more than makes up for them. And then things he may be lacking in I’m strong in. So we have a set of skill sets that complement each other and work well with one another. Whether it was by fate or by design, it worked out.”

“[Greenberg] is a good sounding board for me. Sometimes I get a little too ramped up about a lot of things,” Rogers continued. “I like to be very organized where everything has its place and I like very calculated ways of doing things, which I think is good, but you also have to be willing to deviate and relax a little bit on some things and go in a different direction. I think he does a good job of bounding ideas off of me.”

All one has to do is sit in the wrestling office for ten minutes and the chemistry between the two makes itself obvious.

“We’re like the two brothers from Step Brothers,” Rogers quipped. “We’re always joking.”

But while Greenberg is the perfect counterbalance to Rogers on a personal level, the contributions he makes to the well-being and the future of the wrestling program are invaluable.

“He relates really well to our student athletes and he does a great job recruiting wise,” Rogers said. “I think the biggest impact he’s had has been the recruiting part of it. He can pick up a phone and talk to a kid about any topic. Whether it be music, or school, or shoes. I think I do a good job with the parents. I think I can understand where the parents are coming from. He looks at it from the kids’ point of view, and he does a really good job reaching out to them.”

Now that he’s here, Greenberg wants to mold the program into one that commands respect from its opponents. However, beyond garnering success and awards on the mat, he hopes the wrestlers that make their way through F&M’s program continue on to become successful people after college, hopefully developing a positive name and reputation for the program.

“Five years down the road I want this program to be solid as far as every year we’re bringing in a solid group of recruits, that the program is thriving as far as success on the mats, and we’re bringing in kids who, when they graduate, they’re going into the real world and being successful. They’re going out and they’re getting the internships and they’re getting the jobs. Hopefully our fundraising increases because the people who come through here are graduating and becoming very successful.”

“I hope that when you think F&M, I hope you think of wrestling five years from now,” Greenberg continued. “The same way you think of Duke you think basketball. I hope one day when you think of F&M you think of wrestling and you think of successful alums and we have people all over this country being successful in life.”

While producing wins and recruiting All-Americans and, hopefully, one day competing for a national title on a consistent basis are all things that are important for Greenberg, how the wrestlers that come through the program develop as students and as young leaders is just as, if not more, important.

Greenberg had a very successful wrestling career. He spent a summer training for the Olympic qualifiers. There are plenty of athletic successes he could draw upon as being the best memories he has from wrestling.

But that’s not the reason he’s here at F&M. It’s not the reason he left the marketing world to be an assistant coach at a small liberal arts college that, when he first got here, didn’t have much to speak of when it came to wrestling. No, it’s definitely not the athletic achievements that drove Greenberg to return to the sport and motivates him today to work so hard with the guys on the team.

For Greenberg, wrestling is a way of life, and it contributed to his own in so many ways that have nothing to do with athletic prowess. Rather, it is the life lessons he has learned that have made him love the sport so much. While winning championships and being the best on the mat is certainly a priority, it’s not the only one, nor is it the primary one for this coaching staff.

No, wrestling is a sport that teaches its participants about life and how to be successful. This is what drew Greenberg back and as long as he can help the 17 and 18-year-olds who walk through his office door become better men through the sport, it’s safe to say Greenberg isn’t going anywhere.

For Rogers and the entire F&M wrestling community, that is something everyone has to be excited about

Anatomy of a Coach: Mike Rogers

What makes a great coaching tandem? Is it discipline? The ability to relate and connect with athletes? Possessing the aptitude to fully understand and comprehend the X’s and O’s of a sport? What about fundraising for a program or recruiting? Or, like a special recipe, is it some complex combination of all of the above, plus a little something extra?

Being the perfect coach at any level of competition is hard enough. What makes it even more difficult is finding that perfect complement—the assistant coach. The next two articles will take a look at head coach Mike Rogers and assistant coach Matt Greenberg to see what makes them click. In this two part series, the goal is to uncover what makes them so good at what they do and to discover why they work so well together. The following is part one in the series.

Currently ranked seventh in the nation, American University has built quite a reputation for itself. With the top-ranked heavyweight in Ryan Flores and a host of other talented, experienced wrestlers, American would be any wrestling coach’s dream job. Established success, resources, and talented wrestlers. Is there much else a coach could want?

Head coach Mike Rogers used to be a part of that. As an assistant coach at American University only a few years ago, Rogers was an important member of program that was rebuilding and establishing itself as a national power in the collegiate wrestling world.

But, despite its recent success, American was not always the place to be. In 2003, just eight short years ago, American closed the doors on its wrestling program for almost six months. With little funding and general support from the school, the program was floundering, succumbing to the pressures and demands of being a division one program while trying to survive on a limited resource pool.

There was not a whole lot to celebrate and there was even less hope on American’s campus.

“[Ex-American head coach] Mark Cody was very helpful for me because he had a very similar experience with American University eight years ago,” Rogers said. “When he came in, they had one or two scholarships and they dropped the program before he even got there. He left Oklahoma State as a top assistant to take a very low paying job in an expensive area of DC and he was able to build that program up to the point where it was finishing with the top teams in the NCAA and winning division one coach of the year.”

“When I talked to him, looking at the two situations, you have more to start with than I did,” Rogers continued. “So that gave me a lot of comfort.”

What Rogers is referring to is what helped convince him to show up in Lancaster in 2010. When F&M first called Rogers, it featured a floundering program that can’t give out scholarships, doesn’t sport world class wrestling facilities, and didn’t have a reputation as a premier wrestling institution. For as many struggles as F&M had when Rogers first set up shop in Lancaster, Cody, now the head coach at Oklahoma, clearly believed Rogers would have an opportunity to succeed as the head coach of the Diplomats.

Neither Cody nor Rogers ever believed the rebuilding project Rogers was going to have to undertake when he arrived at F&M was going to be easy. Trying to convince top of the line wrestlers to attend a small, expensive school that doesn’t give scholarships is a difficult task. However, that doesn’t mean Rogers is shying away from the challenge.

“When he walked in it was like the slow-motion entrance from She’s All That,” assistant coach Matt Greenberg said. “Jennifer Love Hewitt walks into a party and everything slows down. When he walked in, I knew he was the guy. I knew that was the guy I wanted to work with and learn under. He came from a great program. His strengths and his ability to lay out a plan to show you what he’s expecting from you have made me a better person and a better coach.”

Thanks to many of Rogers’ gifts as a coach, F&M has a bright wrestling future. Those close to Rogers and those who know him well don’t have too many doubts regarding his ability and are confident he will turn F&M into a contender. Rogers and F&M wrestling will be successful in the future, and that’s important to him. But to say that’s all that matters would be to ignore much of what Rogers is about as a person.

Going back to when Rogers was considering whether or not accept the position of head coach at F&M, he placed a great deal of emphasis on how coaching at F&M would fit in to his family life. Luckily for the wrestling program, it fit in quite nicely.

“I think the thing that really sealed the deal for me was that my wife was able to find a job locally,” Rogers said. “I was able to get my family back together. I was driving from Lock Haven down to D.C. twice a week. It was taking a strain on the family, particularly with two young kids.”

“So I think that the opportunity to coach a division one program, that was appealing,” Rogers continued. “But I liked the location and talked with some people and there’s a lot of help, there’s a lot of people here for support. I knew it was going to be a lot of work, which doesn’t scare me at all, but I wanted to know there was support for the program. And the deal sealer was my wife was able to find a job.”

Now that he’s here, F&M and the surrounding community has left its mark on Rogers and, at least so far, the job has turned out to be everything he could have asked for. However, as his time here continues, he is hoping to have an equally significant impact on the school itself. What Rogers brings to the wrestling room is a realization that a school doesn’t need to have all the nicest equipment and dozens of scholarships to make it to the top. He should know; for almost his entire wrestling career, Rogers has been a little bit behind everyone else.

Although he was born in Iowa in the heart of wrestling country, he spent the majority of his childhood growing up in Florida where wrestling is a low priority on the sports totem pole. Football is king down south, and like most other kids growing up in The Sunshine State, Rogers began his athletic career on the gridiron. Ironically, it was an experience he had with football that made him turn to the sport that would stick with him for the rest of his life.

As he stepped onto the football field as a freshman in high school, the head coach looked at him and told him to head back to the locker room. In this particular Florida town, only upperclassmen got a shot at the varsity squad. If Rogers wanted to play football his freshman year, it was going to have to be for the JV team.

Not having the shot to at least go out for the varsity squad irked Rogers, and it drove him away from the sport for good.

“My freshman year, I remember going out for the football team and they told me I had to start on JV,” Rogers said. “I kind of had a discussion with the coach and said, ‘Well, I want to go out for varsity.’ He said freshman play for JV, and I said, ‘Well I don’t want to try out for JV.’ Granted, I was probably only 110 pounds soaking wet at this point, but it really bothered me that I didn’t have the opportunity to try out or compete on the varsity team.”

“So I kind of walked off the field,” Rogers continued. “As I was walking off, the assistant coach saw me and asked where I was going. Now, he had happened to take over the wrestling program recently and said, ‘If you’d like to go out for wrestling then you can wrestle. If you win the spot, you can wrestle for varsity.’ I thought that was very fair. So I went out, won the spot, and got to start.”

Rogers’ career as a wrestler did not start off with a bang. He admitted that, as a freshman starting for the varsity team, he didn’t exactly dominate on the mat.

“I struggled my first year, I got beat up,” Rogers said of his first year as a wrestler. “I only won three or four matches, but I spent the summer really getting better and won more and then eventually won the state title.”

The one constant that has been present throughout Rogers’ career both as a wrestler and as a coach has been his dedication and hard work. He was just the second person from his family to graduate from high school and the first to go to college, and he lived a very blue-collar lifestyle growing up with his father and helping out with the family business.

This work ethic helped mold Rogers into the person he is today and, at the time, it helped turn him into a successful wrestler who loved the sport.

“I grew up working construction and putting up fences,” Rogers said. “My dad owned a fence company and I would wake up in the morning, put up a fence, go to school, go to practice, go work in the shop, and that was my day.”

As the first person to go to college in his family, Rogers didn’t have much to go on during his college search, but he ended up in Pennsylvania at Lock Haven. The opportunity to attend a school that appreciated wrestling was to big draws for Rogers when he had the chance to visit the campus.

“What I really liked, and why I ended up in Pennsylvania, again going back to how the sport’s not very, there not a lot of appreciation for the sport in Florida, so I really wanted to go somewhere that embraced wrestling and really knew what goes into wrestling,” Rogers said. “Wrestling was really important to the whole school and the whole community.”

It was at Lock Haven where Rogers, from a wrestling standpoint, really learned that, in order to be successful at the sport, a team doesn’t need state of the art equipment, a bunch of high school All-Americans, or a brand new wrestling specific facility. A bunch of really good guys and a place to practice is all Rogers and his team at Lock Haven needed to leave its mark on the wrestling world.

“We achieved things with minimal resources, equipment, and all this stuff people claimed you needed to be successful. We didn’t have it,” Rogers said. “Bringing that experience [to F&M], I’ve realized you don’t need the best wrestling room, you don’t need all the coaches in the world, and a budget where you can fly everywhere. All that stuff helps, it makes life easier, but I still think it can be done.”

“You just need a bunch of good guys, a wrestling room, and a good schedule. And that’s what we have [at F&M].”

Throughout his entire experience as a wrestler and his time spent as an assistant coach at American, Rogers has picked up countless lessons that have helped guide him to the point he is at now. What his job is now is to make an impact on F&M using all these lessons and insights he’s gathered over the years.

While Rogers wants F&M wrestling to be successful and he wants the team to have All-Americans, he realizes that achieving success on the mat is not the sole purpose of his job.

“Everyone wants have All-Americans and national champions,” Rogers said. “That’s obviously important. But even more importantly, we need to develop young men to be strong leaders. We need to bring in kids with the right character and then we mold them and shape them into responsible leaders who are going to go out and do great things. I think if you do that, the All-Americans and the champions will come.”

“I think if we go out and try and find the best athlete regardless of what kind of person he is or what kind of student he is, I think he can become an All-American, but he washes out of school,” Rogers added. “Our goal is to have All-Americans, Academic All-Americans, and national champions on the mat, but within the perspective of the overall experience here.”

“If we have guys graduating here and getting good jobs out there in the world and becoming leaders, then I’d say I’ve left my mark.”

Even though Rogers has not yet been the head coach at F&M for two years, one can feel the culture of the program changing. The wrestlers have bought in to what Rogers is selling, and it shows. They’re all equally invested in what they’re doing on the mat as well as in the classroom and outside of F&M’s walls.

Rogers spoke a lot about how wrestling makes one accountable to himself, how it demands the best out of someone and how a wrestler has no one to blame but himself when things go wrong. His wrestlers seem to have embodied that in every facet of their lives, owning up to their athletic, academic, and professional performances.

When Rogers first set foot on F&M’s campus, he inherited a program unsure of its future and one that lacked the necessary hope to get itself turned around. Now that he’s here, that’s all changed. It’s hard not be excited about what’s going on in the wrestling room in the basement of the Mayser Center or on the mat in the gymnasium on match nights.

From the outside, F&M’s turnaround may be somewhat surprising. However, if you poke your head into the office at the top of the stairs of the offices in the Mayser Center, you’ll likely see a coach hard at work. And if you get a chance to speak with him, then anything surprising about F&M’s turnaround melts away.