Cornell's Koll Named WIN/Gable Coach of the Year
Rob Koll has been around wrestling coaches his entire life.
He grew up in the same household and wrestling rooms of legendary coach Bill Koll. He spent four years with Bill Lam at the University of North Carolina, where he earned four All-American honors, including a national title in 1988. And in the past 17 years at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., he first assisted Jack Spates before becoming the Big Red’s head coach 12 years ago.
Koll also had a misconception about perhaps the greatest coach ever.
“I have so much respect for Dan Gable,” said Koll. “But I grew up having this mentality that Coach Gable trained all his guys the same. He didn’t.”
That education about the legendary coach who won 15 national team championships at Iowa between 1977 and 1997 is why Koll was happy to learn that he was named the Dan Gable Coach of the Year by Wrestling International Newsmagazine for 2005
Other finalists for the award were Michigan’s Joe McFarland, Oklahoma’s Spates, Nebraska-Omaha’s Mike Denney (Div. II) and Augsburg’s Jeff Swenson (Div. III). Oklahoma State’s John Smith would have been a finalist but coaches are not allowed to win the award more than once every three years.
“I don’t get too caught up in awards but this one is nice especially since it comes from Coach Gable,” said Koll, who recently led Cornell to its highest NCAA finish — 4th — in 52 years.
Fo
r Koll said his program’s recent success — finishing in the top 10 in two of the past three NCAAs — had much to do with adopting some of Gable’s coaching secrets.“All those (Iowa) guys trained so hard but I found out that Gable treated them and trained them all a little bit differently,” Koll said. “When I found out about that, it changed the way I approached my coaching.”
Koll, who replaced Spates at Cornell in 1993 after a five-year stint as an assistant coach, said he started adjusting his coaching philosophy about five years ago when he learned that he couldn’t train them all like “draft horses.”
“My first couple years at Cornell I made them work hard and we tried to teach every kid the same. We treated every kid like a draft horse,” Koll said. “We try to treat everyone the same but realize there are draft horses and there are thoroughbreds. Not all kids’ styles are the same.”
He also learned that not all college students are the same, especially in an Ivy League setting like Cornell.
“Kids aren’t here just to wrestle … that should be the case with every college wrestler,” said Koll, whose program ranks among the top wrestling programs for academics every year. “Many students here pull all nighters and I don’t mean partying. They are up late studying. I eliminated our 6 a.m. practices, which made it hard for those who were up studying until 3 a.m. It became counter productive.”
That attitude and the fact that Cornell is now challenging the “elite” Division I programs for NCAA championships were reasons why Gable endorsed Koll with this coach of the year honor.
“I’ve been very impressed with the number of athletes and the points being scored by schools with high academic standards,” Gable said. “We’ve proven that there’s not too many excuses out there for kids not being great students and athletes. Rob Koll has proven that strongly.”
This past March, Koll produced four All-Americans, the most in Cornell history, including the school’s first four-timer Travis Lee, who became the school’s winningest wrestler and captured his second NCAA championship at 133 pounds. Cornell’s other All-Americans in St. Louis were Tyler Baier (second at 184 pounds), Joe Mazzurco (fifth at 174) and three-timer Dustin Manotti (sixth at 149).
Koll, who also gives plenty of credit to his assistant coaches Steve Garland, Clint Wattenberg and Jamar Billman, said he and his staff spent plenty of one-on-one time with these four Big Red wrestlers as well as five other NCAA qualifiers Mike Mormile (125), Jordan Lee (141), Joey Hooker (165), Jerry Rinaldi (197) and Tyler Shovin (Hwt).
“We were able to have a bigger staff and train the kids the way I wanted to train them. We are able to work with them one-on-one,” said Koll, whose entire program was endowed five years ago. “We’re getting the same amount out these guys but we do a better job of working around their schedules.”
Koll also credits much of his program’s success to avoiding weight-cutting. Of the four recent All-Americans, three (Lee from 125 to 133, Mazzurco from 165 to 174, and Baier from 174 to 184) all moved up at least one weight class during their careers.
And none of the four All-Americans came to Cornell with impressive prep credentials.
“Travis was flying below the recruiting radar screen,” Koll said of Lee, the first Hawaii native to win a national championship. “Without him we wouldn’t be where we are today. When Travis came in, he was a very talented kid who had a great work ethic.
“Dustin’s is a great story,” Rob said of Manotti, a native of Mifflinburg, Pa. “He never won a state title and he had to live on the back porch of someone’s house while he went to junior college before gaining admittance to Cornell. His parents taught him to be pretty independent and carry his own load.
“Mazzurco was fourth string as a freshman and had gotten pinned by three guys ahead of him. And few would know any of those three guys if I mentioned them. Joe is a great story,” Koll said the two-time NCAA qualifier and senior from Mahopec, N.Y. “I kept telling everyone how good this kid was but no one believed me. He never got ranked all year long until the end.
“Baier is one of my all-time favorites,” said Koll of the three-time qualifier and senior from Elmwood, Wisc. “He was a farm boy from Wisconsin, who came here with a chip on his shoulder because he didn’t get recruited by any of the big schools in the Midwest. He became one of the greatest leaders I’ve ever had.”
Koll said the way the Cornell coaches trained Baier was a good example of how he treated his wrestlers differently.
“Dustin is great on his feet and Tyler is great on the mat,” Koll said. “We conceded that Tyler was not going to get a lot of first-period takedowns and so he wrestled matches with that understanding. Now he rides his opponents and wears them out. It taught him to win tight matches and sure enough at Nationals he found ways to win the close matches.
“Had we kept pushing him to go, go, go and shoot, shoot, shoot, he would have given up more takedowns. I tried to coach him a little bit smarter.”
Koll said his team’s success in St. Louis, and the fact that his mother was there for the first time in 20 years of the tournament that turned 75 this past March, also made his think of his father, Bill, who passed away in September 2003 after a lifetime of success as a wrestler (he earned three NCAA titles at Northern Iowa) and later as a coach at UNI and Penn State.
“It made me think about the times I was dragged from (wrestling) camp to camp holding on to his belt loop and be his demonstrating partner,” Rob said. “Every camp I would have to show a single leg and duck-under. Old timers would say that I wrestle like my dad. No wonder … I was his guinea pig for 14 years.
“Now I have my own son who is 9 years old and I started doing the same thing with him. It doesn’t happen by chance.”
Even though three of his All-Americans will graduate this spring, Koll said he is encouraged about the future of the program that will be led by Manotti and some talented youngsters, including incoming recruits Troy Nickerson and Adam Frey, who were ranked No. 1 at their respective high school weights (125 and 130).
“We are going to continue to be nationally competitive,” said Koll, who is well aware that an Eastern school has not won the NCAA since Penn State claimed the crown in 1953. “We should be able to make a run at a title once we get Oklahoma State to graduate some of their studs.”
Koll’s goal, like all elite coaches, is to someday be the team on top which other programs are gunning for.
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