I am extremely glad that I attended Penn State University and was a member of the wrestling team under Dave Adams and Charlie Speidel. Like most wrestlers, I didn’t achieve everything I would have liked to have as a competitor, but my training as a student-athlete at Penn State laid the foundation for my career in coaching and teaching. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction to be a Penn State graduate. The name “Penn State” puts thoughts in everyone’s minds, but most of all a university that stresses the student-athlete being the center of every athletic program. I hope the wrestlers of the present and the future will compete in a way that will continue to keep the name Penn State synonymous with excellence.
Now, as a competitor against Penn State while coaching at Lock Haven. It was an honor to coach against Penn State. Penn State was always the measuring stick for how our program was doing. The Lock Haven-Penn State matches drew great crowds and lots of enthusiasm. This was good for wrestling. It was just exciting to go back and look at the articles following our dual meets my last few years at Lock Haven. I have a saying, “As iron sharpens iron, one wrestler sharpens another.” This is also true of wrestling programs. I believe as Penn State strove to win the national championship individually and team-wise and we strove to beat Penn State individually and team-wise, we all got better, and the fans loved watching this. I always appreciated the encouragement of the Penn State fans. They were very gracious, and this is the way it should be.
