welcome to the secrets of college planning host anthony uva and today we're going to get some insight into division one wrestling my guest today is scott and he is the head men's wrestling coach at rutgers university and welcome to the show good port of my you know good part of my life learning wrestling at that place and then misfortune of come back to jackson where i was a health and physical educator in a special ed teacher high school so let's go back in time before we get to where you are today ok so back in high school when did you start thinking about going to college was a freshman year of high school senior year when they were all star i was very very fortunate i grew up in a family of coaches you know my my sister now is the head basketball coach at jackson high school my grandfather coached thirty five years of far rockaway high school my father coached everything from little league to pop warner football to the middle school wrestling and my mother was actually an assistant director at the middle school so i kind of knew really early on what i wanted to do with my life i wanted to obviously continue russell i just i love the wrestling but i want to go away to college and come back and be a physical educator even got made fun of where my friends would tell me when i was in high school how you're going to be a gym teacher and i would correct them and say no it's a physical education teacher so i kind of knew what i wanted to do at an early age and followed that path and kind of took me where i am today great so now when u s law cavemen did you wrestle i did i wrestled  shirted as a freshman and i wrestled for years for years and of r c why not had a pretty good career you know at this level it's all about being an all american national champ i never achieve those goals unfortunately but i went to the national tournament three times and had a lot of success when i was there are teams were ranked in the top then a bunch so it was a really really competitive program it's still a competitive program to this day so i have a lot of good memories of walking university it's a small school good teacher school which is one of the reasons why i chose luck pennsylvania it's all wrestling and that's really what drew me to the law cavan and you know i again it's i don't regret that decision for once i get good so now you graduate from cave in how does one go from graduating there to becoming the head wrestling coach at rucker yeah it's a crazy story and you know i don't know how much time we have here but it's a it's unique it's different it's a different story you know i i knew like i told you i always wanted to come back to jackson and be a teacher and a coach that's all i ever cared about doing to physics teacher a football coach which i did for eleven years was fortunate to be you know often to coordinator we had some great teams and i was actually a golf coach i did a little baseball of course wrestling so very very fortunate i knew what i want to do and i did it and i was excited to get back to jackson and i started this career where i thought i'd be there forever and and after about five years with jackson i became the head wrestling coach fortune of valrie gave me an opportunity to take over his spot he and then worked with me  and we end up having these unbelievable teams these great teams where we end up being one year we're fourth in the country next year we're fifth in the country obviously we're number one team in a state in new jersey and we have this unbelievable eighth grade class common seventh eighth graders that are really really good in that whole town of jackson they played football and they wrestled there we won state championships and both so i was like i am going to hunker down here forever and that was my plan and i was excited to get ready for the two thousand and seven eight season we have a bunch of returning state champs coming back with a pre season number one team in the state and you know my mind is let's catch blair academy for the people out there watching blair academy the number one high school team in the country russell wise and we want to do you know win and mythical national title thought we had the team to do it and in the beat tween the state tournament in the summer i had a man approach me guy by the name of bill are from the new york giants he was very tight with bob at the time was a lot of director rockers and he was come up with a five point plan on how to make rockers you know relevant college wrestling and you know they were under budget coach saatchi was the coach at the time they thought about dropping the program coach saatchi and coach ryan save that program i think people are of the impression at the staff now save coach ryan had a lot to do with keeping our program in a sport whether it even today they're dropping division one wrestling programs so those two saved it and then you know it was it wasn't about an interview it was about me giving a five point plan on how to make records wrestle relevant i did that and the next thing you know coach saatchi decides to step down i'm on a six hour interview never wanted to leave never wanted you know didn't think it wasn't a dream or a you know a dream of mine to be a division one head wrestling coach we just happen to have something really special going on at jackson that attracted these administrators and some of the coaches in the state of jersey maybe put my name forward but bill art was the guy and i guess they said the rest is history after a six hour interview and eleven years later here i am  you today well fantastic so let's go into what you look for in high school what it one of the what is students going through to to become a wrestler at the college level especially of the vision one wrestler yeah well kind of a two part question right so my philosophy a little bit it's changed as the program has gotten better and it's grown a philosophy has changed quite a bit so it was all about getting the best wrestler that's that was it for me when i first started first year in the number three recruiting class in the country and i had some really good guys in and that's all it was about for me it was good i want to win right away so i just would you know find a guy that can wrestle in and i would try to give him the come t rockers and we would get a man and we'd find a way to get him and we had to ministre she was working with us so a lot is changed from from that standpoint there's so much more that goes into it home visits become incredibly important doing your due diligence really getting to know the families and getting to know the kid because every kid takes a little bit different every kid has a different story nobody's the same and you got to really get get involved in the family and you know do some creative things to find out about the person and and it's hard  wrestle it's hard it's a lonely place it's a hard sporting me there's no question it's a team sport and we build our program on being a family the team but the end of the day it's an individual sport right you're wrestling in and balin one on one in a lot of the the tough times happen when i was late at night  g m early in the morning on the road all the type of different training that goes into being one of the best wrestlers in the country it's hard and there's so much more to it than just being the best wrestler there's so much more to and i learned that i learned that early on in my career i made a lot of mistakes early on not so much in court i don't regret one kid i've ever gotten and you know the first our first biggest recruit was scott winston was from my high school i coached him and to this day i'll forever be grateful for him taking a chance on rocker's university when he could anywhere in the country so for that i love that kid and that was really what started it going and together we both made mistakes and we grew together and and our staff grew you know we started out with an assistant coach and a volunteer  lee an artist was an assistant coach who actually helped me with that five point when and now we're out a staffer for a full time trainer full time equipment guy strength and conditioning coach you name it we have it so a lot of change in eleven years so i really thank those guys that first started out kind of rambling here a little bit but you know there's so much that goes into it a great character an unbelievable work ethic being able to handle adversity like you're going to lose at this level you're going to lose wrestling matches it doesn't you know we're fortunate scott winston never lost a high school match into the actual who's a three time all american right now for rockers and will finish his six year next year with us was an undefeated wrestler nixzmary added we just wrestled in the national finals was an undefeated new jersey theory we call it the big three athletically obviously the wrestling part of it academically and socially so it goes hand in hand our best guys there's no coincidence they're really good students because there's no distractions if you're constantly a guy hanging around a t zero one nine zero to one and you're struggling it's probably because our academic sport is tremendous to begin with so it's probably because you're cutting corners and and missing class and doing all the little things matter and being a good student athlete is you know if you want to succeed at this  level there is no you can't cut corners it's impossible to do and that includes the social part of it too and that just doesn't mean you know the people have their thinking probably talking about party in which you know go on now and join the nightlife you can get in that doesn't matter where you go to college you can certainly get wrapped up in in the nightlife there and if you're going to do that it's that's part of it this year probably won't achieve at the highest level so we talk about the big three all the time and to be great you got to really be great all three areas and the hard thing to do that separates the best guys in the country from the from the guys that are hovering around the around the twelve or just making the national tournaments so now a student athlete comes to rocker's university for wrestling what what could they expect the what's what's the year round expectation of this this athlete to do they start in august that they start in september when when does it all start for them this sport has gotten so specialized you know just like i'm sure the baseball people out there watching of the softball people or the swimmers or soccer players everything at the youth level has gotten so specialized unfortunately the days of the three sport athlete are kind of god and i think when you get to college the one thing our staff those is you know donn those guys do a really good job of managing in the year because it is it's a full time i don't want to say a job because it's a sport it's russell it should be a job it should be really really fun and we try to convey that to our athletes but you have to be active year round and that doesn't mean you have to go seven days a week but your mind and your focus and your mindset needs to be on wrestling you know year round that when that comes academics and when that comes the social life you know that that's really really important so when we get a kid they're expected to train your round in and there's times you know in august we get off trying to get off the mat quite a bit but the type of athlete we're getting levin years into me being there now is a different type of athlete these guys are hungry to continue to wrestle and i just an example our our national tournament ended march twentieth we have guys on the matter ready get ready to compete in las vegas international style freestyle wrestling and our whole room is training again and we try to do a good job of giving days off we give weekends off you know we try to get them off and away from the mat and there are some n c w rules that are implemented to allow us to do that but we're getting a kid right now that's super super motivated so i guess to do you know the viewers out there what we're looking for someone who wants to train and has a mindset this is what i want to do and there's a certain level i want to achieve and for me to do it it's it's not a three four month year it's a six or twelve month your job so now they get there in one in september september first is usually when they arrive and we have a summer program a lot most of our guys are jersey guys so we have a summer program and and they're there all summer they're training and lifting weights and and doing a lot of wrestling work in camps all summer but we starts at them or first and so what happens in the fall because that the season's on until semesters they're trying to change that we'll believe or not to make it a one semester sport has a lot of legs it might be something that might happen to get away from our national tournament now would be probably around this time in in april late april and get away from march madness and basketball so so now how many how many matches are there in a in a division one program for wrestling we are allowed sixteen dates you're allowed to back to back so there's probably two tournaments that take place during the course of a year and you know whether it's a los vegas invite or a middle and championship sixteen day it's not including the postseason meaning the big ten championship so some teams wrestle you know there's times will wrestle two or three matches in a day and to get four out of conference matches that really help us with home attendance and fill in the rock we're trying to bring in teams that excite people so you're allowed sixteen dates and then you get into the big ten championships in a national tournament and that takes you away until march and then the summer they they do they do any kind of freestyle style wrestling correct here we have a big freestyle program we just started a regional training center we actually combined with princeton their staff and we have a what they call now new jersey regional training center we have its own which has its own coach and starting you know last week we started our practices and we have senior level athletes trying to make world didn't pick teams and it's it's something we just started but we're already recruiting senior level guys to come the rocker's or princeton and you know we'll pay him out of our funds and out of our club wrestling and you know get these guys to live here and train to bring their families here and pursue their dreams of going in olympic and world titles and now how does the recruiting work do you have a bunch of guys going out of coleman the whole country of the world what  recruiting you recruiting never ends were never ends it's a that's a full time job in itself and something i actually enjoy doing i think our staff it's a challenge like i said earlier our recruiting change it's when i first started i told you you know it was all about get the best guys really centered around new jersey and it still centers around new jersey because wrestling in new jersey happens to be an unbelievable area and a great ruslan state you know one of the top three on any given day or we can sit here and argue forever what's the best for us and state whether it's pennsylvania ohio new jersey even california does really well and i want things like that but it's change for us being in this conference has changed our whole focus on recruiting we have to get the best guys we have to get the best guys in the country and  they have to fit what we're trying to do it can't just be keep everybody says to us well you just got to keep the jersey guys home doesn't work like that you gotta it sounds great to get to the local high school fair right now you've got to get the best guys in the country and that's that you know we're bringing in one of the best guys in the country one to national titles high school national titles from california and it was a lot of work to get them to come across the country but those are the guys we need to to win at this level in this conference and of course the jersey guys if they're good enough we want to but they've got to fit what we talked about with character and all that academically and all that good stuff now how many weight classes are there at the college level there's ten ten weight classes one twenty five it starts and then there's a two eighty five super heavyweight whatever unlimited weight class so there's ten weight classes and we are we have nine point nine scholarships so basically ten scholarships we carry a day and every team in division one is different our cap is thirty thirty on the roster and that's really what we carry we get it down to maybe twenty seven twenty based on injuries or you know guys leaving the program but that's what we carry and like i said nine point nine scholarships it's a sport where you can it's not like football you can kind of divvy up your scholarships whether it be a quarter or half a full very very rarely get a full scholarship and in wrestling you got to be special you know on all levels like we talked about but it's rare and for us to build a really solid program we got to give i think we have twenty guys on one on some type of money ok so and that was my next question is financially disruptors is just as expensive as other schools yeah how does that how does it all work financially the is there academic money is there money that that parents can come to and say hey you know what do i do go to financial aid head to head is it all yeah that's a great question because i have a daughter right now is a junior high school and a son who's a freshman hopefully will be getting recruited one day  so that's that's the big thing with parents and recruiting and you know everyone there's some i should say some there's probably ninety percent of parents believe their kid should be on some type of money and for the most part a lot of money that's just the way they think but there's a business structure to it and we have to like i said do our due diligence and be really really smart but the one thing we're fortunate fortunate to have at rockers is you can get money from academic a you can get it from financial aid and you can get it from athletic aid so that really really helps us and you know there's three different areas where where you can get it from so who cares if you know whether it's mcdonald's burger king wendy's whatever it is only three and right it's good so our parents you know when we program on campus to recruit and they know they have those possibilities and get some money from different places not only does it help them it helps us because now we can use athletic money for the people don't get academic aid or financially and how does the training work you know you you talk about the the different types of training you know what's what's a typical training that that a wrestler goes through is it just all just conditioning or is it enough to know there's a there's a lot and it is varies from part you know where we are and parts of the season so the one thing we kind of proud or selves on like to think we do a good job of is we change it up like i said it could be a lonely sport and go into wrestling room every single day at three o'clock makes it very very difficult so even in our pre season we do a lot of different things we do a lot of swim and we do a lot of pushing cars in if you're doing the same thing over and over so we pride ourselves on changing practices but the one thing i adopted a you know from we had frank mall narrow came from penn state obviously they have the best you know i don't know if you know this but then the best russell program the country right now so frank gave us a really good idea five years ago you know we started taking wednesdays off and it's really worked for us in the middle of the season it doesn't matter if we have iowa on friday night we're taking wednesdays off first semester on our schedules are set up for that so our guys know we're go will lift in the morning on a monday morning rush in the afternoon will rush in the afternoon on a tuesday and then they're off wednesday at my office they could be a little bit different than your off day you know we have some guys that they'll come in for technique they'll go for ron that they'll get an extra lift and they'll just watch film or in you know he was always go go go and really rest and relaxation is probably just as important as you know making sure your body feels right is super super important and thursday's like a monday and friday is usually either travel day or make weight day and we're russell on the weekend so so now how about in high school do you find that all of the wrestlers should be doing high school wrestling or is it the outside wrestling that it's more important oh no wrestlers wrestling you know you would like to think high school coach is doing a heck of a job and i know what you're getting at is quite brussel more important now wrestling at the high school level especially in this state is a really big deal it's a really big deal but there's nothing like winning the state title so every kid who really gets involved in high school wrestling has these aspirations of when a district a region or a state title so high school wrestling is that is what it's all about now around this area club wrestling has been become huge just like we talked about earlier every other sport travel teams  learning out you know specialized it's club wrestling in this state there's a lot of clubs there's tremendous coaches at every single club so we from a recruiting standpoint will always talk to both but we always talk to the high school coach high school wrestling superimportant you know really they're you're surrounded by teammates that's really important to us how are you around your teammates parents teachers and then the club russell and something i probably do on the side or extra they take it really to the guys who are really into it take that really really seriously so kind of works hand in hand at the sport which is i think a good thing yes so you're finding more high school is very important for wrestling absolutely i mean that's where you watch all of them you know watch the dual meets and watched our tournaments and they can only wrestle one level to the high school level so it's not like you know maybe basketball you don't even have to play high score soccer you don't have to play on the high school team almost travel teams are really important so do you find private coaches a lot where technique comes into play sure yeah you know techniques a huge part of it and like i said earlier is wrestling but you know a guy who really understands technique and understands position and is somebody who's probably ahead of the curve and it's a it's a sport where you're learning every day i'm learning every day you know i learn every day from our staff and from our guys and so a guy who's willing to put some time in and get to you know go to a club and learn extra techniques after their high school practice and i think it's really important that the high school coach stays on top of their game and in his understanding the new techniques and wrestling and the new ways of training in wrestling because to me i think learning how to train properly and take care of your body and prepare for competition is just as important as the technique part of it is so that's really really important so we're coming to the end of our show and usually i asked my guess what type of advice you want to give to the parents and the students that they want to play division one wrestling they want to come to a school like rocker's what advice you want to give to both the parents and  students are well this comes from a little bit of experience one doing it a long time right i was at the high school level for eleven years and i'm at the college level for eleven years so i've seen both sides of it i also have two kids in high school ones of my daughter dances so she's probably not going to get recruited  parent just be a parent don't be the coach and i've said this before and people have seen me do interviews i've seen of lot of careers lost on a car ride home and that's that's the truth so be a parent though and i'm even guilty you know when i get my kid in the car i want to talk about practice because i sit sometimes and i watch practice from afar never talk to coaches but i watch from afar and i want to ask him why didn't turn on the ball you know playing defensive back why don't we get it out of highest point why are we covering in a certain you know things like that i want to for sports i want to why you didn't do this why are you doing this why are you lifting weights one don't do that just be a parent just be a parent give great advice but you're there to be a parent and it's it's a hard thing to do it's a hard thing to do but remove yourself they have coaches let them coach let them coach and and that's your job as far as a student athlete goes understand that it's very hard it's very very difficult i don't care if it's division one at the highest level in the big ten or if it's division three if you want to be  successful and learn life lessons that are going to carry you wanted to work world it is going to be hard it's going to be demanding and you've got to put in a hard day's work every day and you know there's two things i say this all the time has two things you can control your energy in your tuesday as i'm control it and have it every day be excited to go to work every day be excited to go you know play your sport every day and whatever you're doing it's one hundred ten percent and that's it's a hard thing to do otherwise everybody would do it so you know go down the right path search out people that you know like socks search people out every single day i could talk to and learn from and continue to learn and get better at it but understand that sports at this level is demanding it's not high school it's so it's so different now you're going to a place where people's jobs are on the line as a coach or you know that's your job and there's there's expectations and things like that and and we demand that we demand it from our student athletes and and they got understand that going in it's a little bit different than high school great well thank you very much for coming on i appreciate i appreciate you having me yeah so you've been watching