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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Rick Reed added to this discussion on March 17, 2015

I guess my claim to fame is I was Dotnet legend, Brady Hiatt's first state qualifier in his first year at West Liberty-Salem. Beside that I was a victim of the 3 qualifiers out of Xenia district my Jr. Year as I finished fourth....

I went to school at OSU and graduated in 2005. I took over the Head Coaching job at Bellefontaine High School in 2010. It's a school with little tradition in the sport. We worked hard to build things. Took over the kids club, ran year long open mats, went on summer trips, etc. We grew the numbers and had some good moments (4 time SQ John Maurice, sent 6 to ultra tough Graham added Marion District in 2012, won several small tourneys, etc)

Just didn't feel like we could get over the hump though. Much of this is certainly due to my limitations as a coach but there were other hurdles as well as everyone deals with......The toughest part was watching kids I had worked with for five years in club and MIddle School leave the sport. Like a lot of programs, We could have made a heck of a line-up out of the ones that got away from us.....I struggled to accept that.

Last spring our offensive co-ordinator for football abruptly left. This promoted me to his job. I knew I would struggle to balance my increased role with football.........In July my wife found out she was expecting our first child. This was extremely exciting but was the final nail in the coffin, that I had to give up something.

I had given a long term commitment to our football coach when we recruited him from a successful job at West Liberty. I had to honor that. I would be lying if I didn't admit that the allure of an easier path to reaching the "mountaintop" wasn't a factor. Bellefontaine has a pretty solid tradition in football and we don't have to fight to get talented kids out. We have a staff that is built for long term success and it is a lot of fun to coach.

Luckily, we had a very able replacement in Aaron LaBatt. Aaron was a state qualifier for Bellefontaine in 2004. He has done an incredible job covering wrestling for the Bellefontaine Examiner, where he is a sports writer. He had coached MS for me and jumped at the opportunity. He added Phil Mackesy (Indian Lake '00) and they did a great job this year.

I enjoyed watching wrestling this year as a fan and the freedom that it allows.

Sorry for the length! My baby girl is due Saturday, so we sit here and wait!



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Brady Hiatt added to this discussion on March 17, 2015

Quote from Rick Reed's post:

"I guess my claim to fame is I was Dotnet legend, Brady Hiatt's first state qualifier in his first year at West Liberty-Salem.

My baby girl is due Saturday, so we sit here and wait!"



Fellas -- I tried many times to get Rick to come coach with me -- but alas, his WLS Tiger blood just wouldn't allow him to come to M'Burg. My loss was Bellefontaine's gain. Rick did an amazing job bringing that program (pee-wee, jr. high, HS) from low numbers and a basically non-existent presence in the school to a very solid, growing program in a short amount of time. I'd take him on my staff any day of the week.

A big plus, he joins the ranks of Dads with daughters very shortly. I can't wait to see him deal with boys coming to his front door in 14-16 years. :)



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Justin Hayes added to this discussion on March 18, 2015

Quote from Rick Reed's post:

"I guess my claim to fame is I was Dotnet legend, Brady Hiatt's first state qualifier in his first year at West Liberty-Salem. Beside that I was a victim of the 3 qualifiers out of Xenia district my Jr. Year as I finished fourth....

I went to school at OSU and graduated in 2005. I took over the Head Coaching job at Bellefontaine High School in 2010. It's a school with little tradition in the sport. We worked hard to build things. Took over the kids club, ran year long open mats, went on summer trips, etc. We grew the numbers and had some good moments (4 time SQ John Maurice, sent 6 to ultra tough Graham added Marion District in 2012, won several small tourneys, etc)

Just didn't feel like we could get over the hump though. Much of this is certainly due to my limitations as a coach but there were other hurdles as well as everyone deals with......The toughest part was watching kids I had worked with for five years in club and MIddle School leave the sport. Like a lot of programs, We could have made a heck of a line-up out of the ones that got away from us.....I struggled to accept that.

Last spring our offensive co-ordinator for football abruptly left. This promoted me to his job. I knew I would struggle to balance my increased role with football.........In July my wife found out she was expecting our first child. This was extremely exciting but was the final nail in the coffin, that I had to give up something.

I had given a long term commitment to our football coach when we recruited him from a successful job at West Liberty. I had to honor that. I would be lying if I didn't admit that the allure of an easier path to reaching the "mountaintop" wasn't a factor. Bellefontaine has a pretty solid tradition in football and we don't have to fight to get talented kids out. We have a staff that is built for long term success and it is a lot of fun to coach.

Luckily, we had a very able replacement in Aaron LaBatt. Aaron was a state qualifier for Bellefontaine in 2004. He has done an incredible job covering wrestling for the Bellefontaine Examiner, where he is a sports writer. He had coached MS for me and jumped at the opportunity. He added Phil Mackesy (Indian Lake '00) and they did a great job this year.

I enjoyed watching wrestling this year as a fan and the freedom that it allows.

Sorry for the length! My baby girl is due Saturday, so we sit here and wait!"



Thanks for sharing.

As she grows older you'll want to memorize these three important phrases:

"That's a great idea...", "I understand..." and "How did that make you feel?" LOL!



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Mark Niemann added to this discussion on March 18, 2015

Rick: please settle a bet (and win me $20) - is it pronounced "Bell-fountain" or is it "Bellefontaine"?



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Chris Shepherd added to this discussion on March 18, 2015

Ok, I'm up to bat...here goes...

I started wrestling at Western Brown, as a 6th grader. Western didn't have a youth program or a JH team then but I had an older brother that was a freshman on the HS team. I used to tag along with him to practices and developed a good relationship with then head coach, Mark Abbinante. I asked Coach Ab if he could get me into JH tournaments the following year and he agreed if I could get some teammates to make it worth his while. I gathered up 4 or 5 of my buddies and we became the first Western Brown Junior High Wrestling Team in the 1988-89 and 1989-1990 season. Coach Ab got us into 3 or 4 tournaments that first year and we did really well...just about all of us placed at all events. I was Western's first JH league champion.

When I got into HS I didn't have a ton of role models to set the bar for me, so I largely had to forge my own path. Prior to getting to HS, Western Brown had a grand total of 3 kids that had made it to the state tournament; Brad Donathan (Father of Mason's own, Zach Donathan), his older brother Wendel Donathan (current WBHS Head Coach), and Harmon Sizemore (current WBHS Asst. Coach). Harmon was a senior when I was a freshman and he was my practice partner that year. I went on to become a distric qualifier that year and really had no clue what was possible beyond that. My sophomore year went pretty much the same way, still oblivious to what was possible in the sport.

However, that year I met Jerry Pardue, the godfather of Cincinnati HS wrestling, and Jerry exposed me to a different world within the sport. Jerry hosted those "Team Cincinnati" competition camps where you'd wrestle every kid within two weight classes and get 40 matches in within a single week. It was a season's worth of experience in a week's worth of time. And he wasn't inviting chumps to the camps either! I wrestled with the likes of Roger Chandler, Jerry Grammes, Shawn Enright, Johnny Noble, Clint Musser and many other really big names of the 1990's in Ohio. Merely being around so many successful kids in the offseason raised the bar for me and lead me to becoming a State Qualifier both my Junior and Senior year. As a senior I had set the goal to become my school's second state placer (Brad Donathan, 6th, 1986, I believe)but I came up a little short, dropping a 1 point decision in the placement round in a weight class won by Brian Singleton of Mantua Crestwood (HAMMER!!!). I graduated from Western as the all time wins record holder at 102, and held onto the record until years later when a group of kids I had helped coach crushed it. Along with many others from the Cincinnati area, I owe a big chunk of my meagor success to Jerry Pardue.

I went on to attend Miami University and was a part of the wrestling team there through my first semester of school. It turned out many distractions got in the way of ever becoming a successful college wrestler and I went a different direction. Apart from wrestling, Miami was never a really good fit for me. I found myself in the U.S. Navy as an FMF Corpsman with the Marines and did much growing up in the next 5 years.

When I returned from the military, the head coach at Western, Scott Smith,reached out to me to come on board as an asst. coach, to help build a team from a struggling skeleton of a program. We got things turned around and ended up putting together a respectable program in a short period of time. We won our school's first league team titles (3 of them), our first sectional titles (3 of them) and sent a good number of kids to districts and state.

My greatest accomplishment as a coach was guiding wrestlers to becoming good citizens and contributors to society. Years later it is most refreshing to see our kids that went on to become physical therapists, doctors, engineers, brokers and many other successful careers. I look around our area and there are a good number of our kids that have chosen to give back by picking up the torch as coaches.

My claim to fame would be the Hammer & Anvil Invitational at Western Brown. I am the originator (along with then Head Coach, Scott Smith) of the Hammer & Anvil Invitational. It took years worth of work to get the tournament to where it is now. The sole purpose was to host a tournament that contributed to the development of our own kids by providing the caliber of competition they needed to see to prepare them for the post-season. Mission accomplished!



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Brady Hiatt added to this discussion on March 18, 2015

Quote from Mark Niemann's post:

"Rick: please settle a bet (and win me $20) - is it pronounced "Bell-fountain" or is it "Bellefontaine"?"



Bell-Fountain



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Hank Kornblut added to this discussion on March 19, 2015

Chris: Was Peter Nathanson on the Miami team when you were there?

Very good story by the way. Love that you forged a path on your own in this sport.



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Chris Shepherd added to this discussion on March 19, 2015

Quote from Hank Kornblut's post:

"Chris: Was Peter Nathanson on the Miami team when you were there?

Very good story by the way. Love that you forged a path on your own in this sport."



He was still there. I didn't get to know him very well but he was there. As I recall, wasn't he one of the Beachwood fellas? Brian Zeid was in my frosh group. All good dudes!



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Chris Shepherd added to this discussion on March 19, 2015

Actually, was Nathanson a Shaker fella?



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Hank Kornblut added to this discussion on March 19, 2015

Quote from Chris Shepherd's post:

"Actually, was Nathanson a Shaker fella?"



Pete was from Shaker. He received the largest wrestling scholarship in Miami history from what i was told and started as a true frosh. Beat the returning D2 NCAA champ. Won around 25 matches (record was around 25-7). But he was not wired for college wrestling. Didn't have the right mentality for the grind.



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Justin Hayes added to this discussion on May 21, 2015

Bump.

Go on. Post. You know you want to introduce yourself....



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Mark Niemann added to this discussion on May 22, 2015

psssssst: Curt - I think he's talking to you, among others!



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Justin Hayes added to this discussion on May 22, 2015

Quote from Mark Niemann's post:

"psssssst: Curt - I think he's talking to you, among others!"



It's true! It's true!



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Curt Heinrichs added to this discussion on May 23, 2015

I'm Curt Heinrichs and Mark peer pressured me into joining.

I got cut from the basketball team as a sophomore in high school and figured I could wrestle to stay in shape for football. I wrestled 145 as a sophomore and 152 as a junior and senior for Napoleon. I was a below-average wrestler, but I nearly won a state title, falling only 8 matches short of a championship as a junior. I never wrestled Greco or freestyle, but I wish I had and would like to get a better understanding of both.

My two younger brothers also wrestled and both were much better than me.

I went to graduated from The Ohio State University and now live in Cleveland with my wife and 2 kids under the age of 3. I cover Ohio State wrestling for Eleven Warriors



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Discussion Topic: Wrestling Anonymous: Introductions Are In Order!
Justin Hayes added to this discussion on May 23, 2015

Quote from Curt Heinrichs's post:

"I was a below-average wrestler, but I nearly won a state title, falling only 8 matches short of a championship as a junior."



I'm so stealing this line and claiming it as my own...pure genius!

Thanks for posting, Curt.

Next?



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