Editor’s Note: As W.I.N. begins its 13th year of publishing, editor Mike Finn will spent time with today’s college coaches and significant questions that relate to their programs and the sport of wrestling in general. Finn recently visited with Oklahoma State’s John Smith, who beginning his 15th year at the Cowboy helm and has produced five team championships, including the last four consecutive years. He also was a two-time NCAA champ for OSU (1987-88).

Q You’ve lost three former national champions off last year’s team. Is this a rebuilding or reloading year for Oklahoma State?
A When you’ve won the last four NCAA championships, I don’t think you envision yourself doing anything but that again. Whether it be rebuilding or reloading, I guess you can call it what it is and we will try to win another national championship.

Q Some fans think Oklahoma State has enough depth to simply replace departed All-Americans. Is that the case?
A We are in the same position as most teams. We are challenging for the title. You’ve got 30-33 guys in your room and that’s what we stay at. If people say we have depth, our staff has done a good job of developing some good young men who might have walked on. Having strong backups, we’ve been pretty fortunate that we’ve had our front-line guys to stay healthy during the year or so. It’s made a big difference for us in the last several years.

Q Two-time champion Johny Hendricks was quite the talk at last year’s NCAAs because of his personality and actions. Do those type of things make people forget how good he actually is?
A He loves to wrestle and loves to win and he has a lot of fun with it. He’s not afraid to show his emotions on the mat. I think he brings a little life to the team and no question to our fans. Some people can look at that differently. We’ve had guys who have won and you wouldn’t have even known that they won. Everyone is a little different and that diversity that we do have is very healthy.

Q Hendricks is in line to become one of just 15 Oklahoma State wrestlers to win three NCAA titles. Should we rate him with the other Cowboys who became legends because of their success?
A For Johny, the bottom line is that he is a two-time NCAA champion, who’s had to face a lot of very good wrestlers along the way to do that. For him to win three at a very competitive weight class … and do don’t often see to many three-time NCAA champions around 157 and 165 pounds. Absolutely, he needs to be considered one of the greats, especially in that weight class.

Q What is the difference to being the hunter and the hunted when it comes shooting for an NCAA team championship?
A I don’t know what role we are playing this year. Starting out, we’re not ranked No. 1 and I’ve never really looked at that. As a coached, I’ve never focused on using those situations to motivate my team. I think it’s a little bit of a false motivation for your team. There is no question that we have an uphill battle to win a championship this year. It’s a different challenge and probably the greatest one that we’ve had in the last five years. But that’s exciting too. For us as a staff, we have to turn some with very little credentials in college into champions if we are going to be able to repeat. We have a few more individuals who don’t have a lot of experience. We hope we by-pass the fact that several athletes have to go through some lessons to become better. Hopefully, we can by-pass some of those lessons.
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