Ray Brinzer

I created this awhile ago; it seems worth posting. If I did it now I’d probably add Jiu-Jitsu to the Judo season, since I think matwork is very helpful, and the Judo people seem to bring athletes back to their feet quicker than ever, these days.

I’d also do it as an SVG file so I could scale it properly. Possibly I’ll re-do it in Inkscape and update it.

Back when I coached North Allegheny’s junior high team, I wanted to run three full seasons along a similar model. I think the results would have been great. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to make ambitious plans like this happen, even when the athletes are entirely on board.

I suppose when I give interviews, I should post them here.

Unfortunately, I usually just scratch the surface in these talks. I have a lot of interesting questions and provisional answers in mind.

USA Wrestling is a good organization, but it’s too hard to find information about them. The members of the organization generally have no idea how decisions are made, how money is spent, or how they can become involved.

Their website doesn’t help much; it’s focused on news and events, but tells little about the organization itself. This is, I’m sure, because people like this sort of thing… you drive traffic by emulating MTV, not CSPAN. Still, this leaves a serious deficit.

Thus, I’ve started what I’m calling The USA Wrestling Documentation Project. I’d like to see it become a clear, easy-to-use guide to USA Wrestling and the state governing bodies affiliated with it. By-laws, budgets, committees, officers, staff, and various other things of interest to the membership should eventually be there.

I’ve used the same software that runs Wikipedia, though I’ve restricted editing privileges to those with accounts; possibly this will change later, as I become more familiar with administering the project. If anyone would like an account, create an account at The Open Mat Forum and send a message to me there (my username is Ray Brinzer).

Happy Independence Day (if you’re an American). God Bless America, and USA Wrestling too.

One day in practice an athlete had done something to tick Gable off. I don’t recall what it was, but it was bad enough that he was clearly going to catch hell for it, and was fearing it. So I watched, and got what may be the single best lesson in coaching I ever had.

Gable walked up to him scowling, stabbed his finger at the fellow’s face, and barked, “That’s not how you’re going to be a national champion!”

He then continued to chew the guy out, part of which consisted of telling him how great wrestlers trained; along the way, he indirectly told him several more times that he was going to be a national champion. By the end of it the athlete was almost crawling out of his skin, desperate to begin redeeming himself with a brutal workout.

I went away laughing from that one: Gable managed to punish the guy and brainwash him at the same time. It was just brilliant. But it was not at all a singular event… that’s how you do these things. Dan Gable was consistently positive as a coach, because it worked.

It seems worth mentioning that there is a very long Ask Ray Brinzer Anything discussion going over at the OpenMat Wrestling Forum. It’s like being interviewed by the Hydra; I answer one question, and two more pop up to take its place. As a result, I’ve been slow to post here, recently.

The questions have been good, and the format has forced me to write a good deal that I’ve been meaning to write; I’ll clean up some of the answers, and re-post them here. But for all I’ve written, it’s still a small part of what I really want to get across about wrestling. Too much of what is written about coaching consists of details, and too little of ideas.

One of the very persistent stories about me involves my missing, or almost missing, an important match because I was playing a video game. There were actually two occasions where something interesting along those lines happened. I recently wrote up one of them in response to a question on on a web forum, so I’m reprinting it here. I’ll try to write up the other one soon.

My last match at states, in 9th grade (1986), was for 5th place. I spent the time between matches playing Gauntlet, and though it allowed you to continue by adding quarters, I never did; I was more interested in seeing how far I could get on one.

So, I was out in the hall playing, and doing rather well, when Scott DeAugustino, our assistant coach and the son of our head coach, Gus DeAugustino, came to find me. “Ray,” he said, “you’re coming up on mat” whatever-it-was. They hadn’t called me yet, though, and I knew I had a reasonable amount of time even after they did, so I said, “Okay, thanks,” and kept playing. Scotty stared at me for a moment, and left.

After a bit he came back and said something along the lines of, “Gus wants you to get ready for your match.” I told him I’d be ready; he left again. I’d been wrestling since second grade, and had been to God-knows-how-many tournaments, so this wasn’t really a new thing for me. I knew what I was doing. Besides, I didn’t really think much of taking 5th.

About a minute later, the screen suddenly flashed off, leaving that little dot in the center which lasts awhile on old monitors. I looked up in surprise, and there was Gus with the plug in his hand. He turned me around and shoved me all the way down the hall, screaming incoherently; the only thing I actually remember was “get out there” several times.

So, I got to my corner… early. They called me to the mat. I jogged in place a bit, to show I was warming up. The match before mine ended. I went out. I pinned the guy. Without saying anything, I think I made it clear on my way back that I wasn’t too happy with what had happened.

It took Gus awhile to understand that I didn’t need to get all worked up before a match, as he did, in order to be effective. He didn’t bother me about that sort of thing the next year, though.

I should, I suppose, mention that I did a few interviews over on Flowrestling. This is the more interesting one.

It felt like I was just rambling, but watching it, I find it’s not as bad as I thought (except for a tendency to stutter; I’m not sure when that came about). It does capture how I’ve felt about the state of affairs in American wrestling for some time, now.

I hate to go on about gloom and doom; pessimism doesn’t suit me, and I’m more inclined to fix problems than to complain about them. Some problems really are awfully hard to solve, however. This is such a case… amongst other reasons, because there isn’t an economic basis for great developmental wrestling programs in this country. And if there were, the requirements would cut directly across the grain of the public school system.

Possibly we’ll get it done anyway; “difficult” doesn’t mean “impossible”, after all. If not, it’s still the sport that gave me a lot of my close friends and best experiences, and will continue to do so for others. It’s too bad that my own involvement as a coach is much less than it was, and seems likely to be less still, but I have a family to compensate me for that. As trade-offs go, it’s a very good one.

Jon Kolb is an old friend; his oldest son, Eric, was on my junior high school team. Mr. Kolb (as I called, and in fact still call him) used to take a few of the harder-working wrestlers on the team different places to work out. As he was the strength coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers at the time, we’d often wind up at Three Rivers Stadium, bunny-hopping up the steps, or lifting in the weight room. When the Steelers were lifting at the same time, we’d wait for the weights to come open so we could get sets in. Jon took us out to stay at his ranch, as well, where we did a lot of running. Overall, he took pretty good care of us.

One Sunday afternoon several years ago, Jon showed up with his youngest son, Caleb at an open-room workout the Angry Fish were running. We hadn’t spoken in many years, so it was a pleasant surprise. Caleb was interested in wrestling; Jon was wondering whether it might be too late to start. Caleb was 12, he said, and a pretty good athlete, but had never wrestled before.

“Good,” I said. “No bad habits.” Jon looked surprised, and said, “That’s what I say about kids who have never played Pop Warner football!” He told me how much he liked finding good athletes who were new to football, because the youth coaches generally made a mess out of the ones in their programs.

Now, there is a general perception that sports have become so competitive that to reach the highest levels, one must start kids off at a very young age, and that they must specialize early. The odd thing is, in my experience the people least likely to believe that are elite athletes. And it’s not just wrestling; here’s a fellow with four Super Bowl rings who has the same outlook on football.

Last night Caleb won the Pennsylvania AA state championships at 171 pounds; he went undefeated this year. He’ll be wrestling at Nebraska in the fall.

It strikes me that, as of this winter, it has been 30 years since I began wrestling as a second-grader in Charleston, West Virginia.

Throughout a large part of that time, the sport was the focus of my life. I lost and won a great many matches. My teammates have been some of the most remarkable wrestlers in our country. I’ve had the good fortune to learn from the likes of Dan Gable, Dave Schultz, John Smith, and Gus DeAugustino. And I got to compete in something like a dozen countries (other than my own), many of them repeatedly.

Overall, it’s been pretty cool.

A conversation with an athlete reminded me of an important point.

Any sufficiently ambitious wrestler, as he learns the sport, is going to lose matches. From a coach’s standpoint, that’s acceptable.

That shortly after the match he should have no idea, or only a sketchy sense, of why he lost is not so great. Some people do a better job of remembering what happened on the mat than others, though.

That he makes no effort to figure out why he lost… that’s unacceptable. Athletes should be taught to analyze tape starting at a young age. And even if there’s no tape available, one can usually talk to a coach.

Analysis, by the way, is mostly a matter of asking and answering questions. At first, the coach asks the questions, and helps the athlete answer them. After awhile, the athlete should be able to answer common questions more easily. When the athlete can ask useful questions of himself… then you’ve gotten somewhere.

In folkstyle, for example, an athlete should be able to explain his choice of position (i.e. top, bottom, neutral, defer). Of course, he can only do this if you don’t always make that decision for him.