Editor’s Note: At the age of 27, Cael Sanderson — the only collegiate wrestler to go unbeaten (159-0) and win four NCAA championships (with Iowa State, 1999-2002) before winning an Olympic gold medal in 2004 — became just the sixth Cyclone head coach in ISU history last April. In less than a year, the native of Heber City, Utah, had Iowa State ranked No. 2 in the country prior to the NCAA championships. W.I.N. Editor Mike Finn spoke to Sanderson one week before the Big 12 tournament.


By Mike Finn, W.I.N. Editor

Q This is probably not the best way to start an interview. But I was one of your skeptics when you were hired; thinking you were either too young or too inexperienced to become a head coach of a Div. I program. What was it that people like me did not see in you when you took this job?
A I know that I have been around coaching and wrestling my whole life and some of the best coaches in the world. High school-wise, I spent my whole childhood under my father, (Steve Sanderson) who built a national powerhouse (Wasatch High School) out of a small community. Then I spent a lot of time under (former Iowa State) Coach (Bobby) Douglas and (U.S. National coach) Kevin Jackson. I think I understand what it takes to be successful. I think I understand the mindset of the training; all the little things that make a big difference.
But the biggest thing for me was getting the right people here; having Cody Sanderson and Tim Hartung (as top assistant coaches). I rely heavily on those guys. We meet all the time and go over everything. It’s not something where I only do things my way. I know what I want and what I want our guys to look like, but I want to find the right way.

Q When did you know that you wanted to be a coach and when did you start seeing yourself in this role?
A That was something I started developing over the last three or four years when I knew that I wanted to be a college coach. I spent a lot of time talking to my dad, who advised me. He said, “Figure out what you want to see when your team goes out there.” That’s something I’ve spent a lot of time on.

Q As a competitor in college and on the international level, you were relatively quiet. Some people may have said you weren’t comfortable with having the spotlight on you and may have wondered how you will deal with the spotlight as a coach. Do you think a lot of people did not understand your style?
A I know what my goals are and I knew what goals were. I looked at the media and different outlets like that as distractions. You have to do things for the right reasons. If you are trying to do something to be famous or for credibility, then it gets tough. I knew that I wanted to be an Olympic champion. I wasn’t looking to get the accolades that go with being an Olympic champion.

Q Why not want the accolades that go with being an Olympic champ and the only college wrestler to complete a career undefeated?
A It wasn’t my priority. I knew if I was focused on those things, it would be more difficult and would change things. It’s like counting your chickens before they are hatched. You have to win first. That is my mentality.

Q Did you study the process on what it took to become a four-time undefeated champ, an Olympic champ and now a head college coach?
A Yes, I think so. I’ve always been a student of the game. I’ve always wanted to find the best way. As an athlete, I was the kind of guy who trusted my coaches and I was going to do everything they told me to do. I wasn’t trying to strategize on my own. If Kevin Jackson told me to run the Cog Trail, I wasn’t going to ask him why. I would just do it. As a coach now, I have to analyze why, which is a big change for me. That’s where I rely heavily on Cody and Tim and just past experiences. A lot of it is building relationships with the kids.

Q Do you attack coaching like you attacked wrestling as a competitor?
A I try to. Every way I know how, I’m trying to. I’m still learning what I can do as a coach and how we can take this program and continue to build it. There is nothing else I think about, outside of my family. This is my mission. I want to win some national championships here.

Q You have some young talent on your team and were credited with bringing much of that talent to Ames when you were an assistant coach. What did you learn about yourself during the recruiting process of these young men?
A I’ve learned quite a bit. I think a lot of it comes down to kids and parents trusting you and knowing that you are sincere. But on the other hand, it’s tough because you know you are going to lose some big recruits. But you’re also going to get some; just like this job. At first, I took it real personal. I’ve got that tunnel vision where I think (Iowa State) is the place and come here if you want to see how good you can get.

Q On the college level, you never lost. On the international level, you rarely lost. Was losing even part of your vocabulary growing up?
A As an athlete, I always expected to win. That’s what I do as a coach, too. Every time these guys step out on the mat, I believe they can win and expect them to win and do what we work on in practice. What I hate is losing.

Q After your team lost to Iowa in the early-December dual, what was the next practice like? Were you angry and how did you deal with your athletes to get them to respond so well the rest of the season?
A I wasn’t angry. The first thing we talked about, coming back into the locker room, was that this is just a game. It’s worth fighting for and all those great things. It’s fun to win, but the bottom line is that it’s just a game. I think some of them were putting more pressure on themselves than they needed to, which is common. We just continued to be positive and seek out their strengths.

Q Before we get more into your season, I want to talk about the day you took this job. First, did you ever consider the Ohio State job?
A I don’t want to talk a lot about it, but any coach who’s not leading one of the top programs in the country would be foolish not to consider that job, just because of the strength of (Ohio’s) high school wrestling and the potential there with just a huge university. I love Iowa State and this is home. The kids here are the guys I want to be with.

Q Secondly, you were pretty emotional when Iowa State announced your hiring. Can you look back now and say why that was so emotional?
A I think it was tough to see the transition and see Coach Douglas step down from something he loved so much. Outside of his family, wrestling is something he thinks about all day. It’s his passion and it just kind of hit me that he was retiring. He’s still involved with every part of wrestling that is out there.

Q I don’t remember ever seeing you that emotional, even looking back at when you won your fourth NCAA title.
A I try to stay pretty consistent with the way I show my feelings. In some areas, I can be pretty emotional, but I try not to be.

Q Regarding Coach Douglas, what would be the No. 1 thing that you picked up from him?
A It’s hard to pick one thing, but technically, I feel very comfortable in what I learned from him and teaching to help kids take what they have and go to the next level. (I saw) his passion and desire, the little things and ways he handled certain situations like recruiting and the ways he deals with different kids. I watched him pretty closely and know the way he handles himself is very impressive.

Q Dan Gable was never one of your coaches, but like you he was a former Iowa State national champion and Olympic champion before becoming a successful college coach. Are you uncomfortable with those comparisons?
A Not really. They don’t mean anything to me. You can compare anyone to anyone, but it’s just opinion and opinions don’t matter much.

Q Instead of people saying you are the “second coming” of Dan Gable, would you rather they say it’s the “first coming” of Cael Sanderson?
A For sure. I’m not interested in being compared to anyone. I will do my best and leave it at that.

Q Is that the same way you treated comparisons as a wrestler?
A Yeah, it’s fun and flattering to be compared to some people you know have left a legacy in the sport. But once again when it comes down to it, it’s all just opinion and doesn’t mean more than that. It’s just entertainment.

Q Looking back at your senior year, what were your favorite moments?
A The last match was fun. It was a big deal because of all the lead-up from four years, including summers. There were no breaks while trying to get done what I was trying to do. I liked being on a team with my brothers and the friendships that we had. Everyone’s goal was to win a national championship and our best chance was 2000, when we thought we had it wrapped up the night before but things didn’t work out. There was a lot to think about, then. There were a lot of great matches, a lot of great experiences, a lot of hard work. I’m just glad and grateful that I ended up at Iowa State.

Q Your college records make you the standard bearer in the sport, where future wrestlers will say they want to be like Sanderson. What recommendations would you make to a young wrestler as he takes on such a role?
A Just attack like you would attack other goals. When I was growing up, I wanted to be an Olympic champion and my goal was to simply be a couple time champion. Then (Oklahoma State’s) Pat Smith became a four-time champion and that changed everything and everyone thought I could be a four-time national champion. Now kids will think they can go undefeated and they can. Don’t limit yourself and take it one match at a time. My attitude was that I wanted to be the very best, but that kept adjusting.

Q Turning to this year, can you give me a reason for the success of this program that people do not know?
A It’s not a big surprise to me or people who have been close to the program. We had a tough, solid team coming in with three seniors who have been All-Americans throughout their career, then a group of freshmen who were considered the best recruiting class coming out of high school. If you put those together and everyone is competing and giving their best effort, you are going to have a good team.

Q But many freshmen have troubles adjusting to college. Why did you have so much success with these guys, including one — Cyler Sanderson — who is your brother?
A They are a great group of kids, who work hard and do everything you tell them to do. And they are talented on top of that. That’s a good combination. A lot of them know they are going to be real good. It’s hard to say when everything is going to come together to where they are competing for a national title. Things came together real quick for them.

Q There are a lot of great high school wrestlers who struggle in college. How do you take someone with a great high school resume and turn it into real college success?
A I think a lot of it is attitude and the little things. There are a lot of talented kids who have had success. But when it comes down to it, you can’t take no for an answer and be willing to do what it takes. I don’t think a lot of people are willing to give a total effort. That is something that is a big part of our program. We talk about being totally committed to the team and yourself.

Q Regarding your brother, Cyler, how do you separate sibling rivalry from a strong coach-athlete relationship?
A I guess it depends on where we are. In the wrestling room, it’s coach-athlete, while at my house — playing PlayStation — it’s brother-brother, where we are bickering and fighting like most brothers. It’s not easy to do (separating the two), but it’s something I’ve learned as a coach; seeing Cyler and being part of his career. But you’ve got to treat every kid like he was your brother.

Q You have two more brothers, Cody, 30, and Cole, 28, who also wrestled at Iowa State before you. What was it like growing up a Sanderson boy in Utah? What was the household like?
A We played hard. We came from parents who made huge sacrifices to help us do what we needed to do to be successful. We didn’t fight a lot, but we competed for everything. I don’t ever remembering taking a swing at one of my brothers. I know they both swung at me a couple times. I spent some time hiding in the bathroom after I’d tease them. You could say I was a “tag-along” pesky little brother.

Q Even with that, you’ve stayed so close as even your brother Cole, who is in graduate school at Iowa State, is part of your program. Is it simply the sport that kept you brothers so close?
A I would give a lot of the credit to the sport. That’s where my family spent much of our time together; going to tournaments and practicing every day. Then coming here to school, living together and training and working together. In high school, we were just regular brothers. We weren’t as close as we are now.

Q What are the personality differences between you guys?
A Starting with Cody, he’s the guy who studies and analyzes everything. He was high school valedictorian. He had straight As all the way through. He always wanted to be a doctor and could have been had he chose to. He’s great here because he analyzes and researches everything.
Cole is the passionate one. He’s 110 percent all the time. As an athlete, no one worked harder than him. Sometimes, he worked too hard in his matches and didn’t know how to hold back. That’s how he lives his life every day.
Me, I’m kind of go with the flow, but expect the best. Like all my brothers, I’m going to work hard to get what I want. Academically and wrestling, Cody and Cole had the hard jobs. They set the standard that I wanted to follow. There were some things I passed them, some things I did not. They were the guys I looked up to and the guys I wanted to be like. Even in college, they were the two hardest-working kids on the team. I had no choice but to follow right a long. We had one car for three brothers, so no one was going home until we are all done working out.
It’s harder for me to talk about Cyler because he is one of my athletes, but I’d say he is a mix between us. He’s got Cole’s 110-percent attitude and is a nice guy, but he gets pretty ornery too. He’s a tough one to read.

Q There is one obvious physical difference between you and your brothers. You are so much bigger, while they were all sub-150 pounders in college. Is there anything in the Sanderson lineage that led to this size difference?
A My dad had some big brothers. A couple of them were over six-foot and played college football. Then my dad is as tall as me but he wrestled like 142. He was a skinny rail — some of those pictures of him as a kid are pretty funny — but it was a different age then. They would cut more weight and had more time to recover.

Q What is it like when all the entire Sanderson family is together?
A It depends on where we are, but usually it’s teaming up on somebody. It depends on whether we are playing games, where we are harassing Cole because we forced him to play. Cody and Cole and I would have to twist his arm to play football with us, where you need at least three; someone to quarterback.
We’re all pretty close, but we have a lot more distractions with having kids. We get on each other but support each other a lot. My parents come down for most of the big matches. For a couple years, it was just me out here.

Q How long do you think the four of you will be together at Iowa State?
A I think it will be for a while. Cole will eventually find a job in Central Iowa. Cyler thinks he wants to go back to Utah, now, but in a couple years who knows? I hope Cody will be here as long as wants.

Q You and your wife, Kelly, just had your first child, Tate, who was born Feb 3. Can you compare becoming a father to your wrestling success?
A I couldn’t imagine what it’s like to have a kid through the pregnancy and even before that. I just imagined it would be like winning a gold medal, which is a pretty awesome, relaxing, comfortable feeling for a few days. Then it’s back to the grindstone.
Now I can’t wait to get home every day. It’s not quite like winning a gold medal everyday, but it’s close.