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
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