Editor’s Note: Bob Ferraro started the National High School Coaches Association and the High School Nationals in 1989. Under Ferraro, the former Bucknell wrestling coach, the NHSCA now features championships in at least 13 high school sports. W.I.N. editor Mike Finn spoke to the 58-year-old Ferraro during the recent NHSCA Nationals in Virginia Beach, Va.

This is an expanded version of the interview that appears in the April 20, 2007 printed issue of W.I.N.

Q The NHSCA has hosted this event for nearly 20 years. What is the No. 1 thing you get out of this event?

A I love talking to the coaches. I love observing a lot of the love stories that go on behind the scenes. I sit in the stands to listen to parents and coaches and wrestlers interact. That’s my enjoyment.

Q You seem to have a good feel for coaches. Is it a brotherhood that you feel for them?

A Absolutely. Coaches are really givers. They give their heart and soul and would do anything for kid. In fact, they would do anything to help anyone. I like being around people like that. That’s why I like coming to these events. It’s not so much to watch the competition.

There is some great talent out here but that’s a product of all the coaches’ hard work. More importantly, I enjoy interacting with a coach and finding out who he is and what he’s all about. They have some amazing stories. There would not be enough programming in all the channels we have on TV to be able to accommodate the interesting human interest stories that we have with our wrestling coaches in particular. They are the kind of people you want with you in a fox hole if you are at war because you know they are going to have your back.

I just like hearing the individual stories; finding out that a wrestler and their family may be homeless and they take the whole family in. There are unbelievable things being done that know one knows about.

Q Do coaches want to talk to about these stories?

A They never really initiate the conversation by telling you who they are and what they do. You have to pull it out of them. I enjoy doing that. It’s like anything. These are relationships that you have forever. Some of these coaches only come to this one event and I look forward to seeing them each year. It’s exciting for me to watch the coaches interact with the kids, interacting with the parents, picking the kid up when he’s down. That’s where I get my satisfaction.

Q Not to make you feel old, but you have been around coaching for nearly half a century. What changes have you seen in coaching that you like?

A I think in the early days, there was a standard that all the coaches met. They all seemed to keep a little bit of a distance and I don’t know if that was part of their job description or conveyed by the administration that they didn’t want them to develop close relationships. It seems like the coaches back in the 1950s and 1960s at the high school level kept their distance.

I happened to wrestle for St. Anthony’s Youth Center, which was in the oldest league in the country. They started that program in 1958. I remember the first year we had the program and they took our basketball team and they made us wrestle. No one knew anything about wrestling and we were all street kids happy to be playing basketball.

I loved the director of the youth center, who — because my father died when I was 12 — became almost a fatherly image to all the kids who went to the youth center. The parents also felt very safe turning their kids over to the administrators.

I remember that the future heavyweight boxing champion Larry Holmes was on my midget wrestling team and his brother Lee was a much tougher wrestler. It look Larry five years to break the starting lineup.

When he was in seventh grade, both he and his best friend made the team and were so proud that they made the team that the youth center director got a call from the principal of the junior high school and said we have two kids from the youth center who stoled your wrestling uniform. The youth center director found out he was talking about Larry and his friend and said, “They didn’t steal the uniforms. They made the team and we gave them the uniforms so they can take them home to alter them.”

They were so proud that they made the team. They had spent their whole day in class wearing their uniforms and couldn’t wait to tell people they made the team.

Q You have a lot of stories. How do you share these with fans?

A The NHSCA is actually doing a collection. We met with Reader’s Digest and the “Chicken Soup” series that they have. We call it, “Heart-warming stories by coaches and athletes.” We have been collecting these for over three years and I have well over 100. They told me if I have over 100 good ones that they will very seriously consider publishing the stories. We have some amazing stories and there are from all sports. A lot of them are from wrestling.

I think the human interest aspect of athletics needs to be told. I think it can be told best by these individual stories because they speak for themselves. They speak for coaches. They speak for athletes. They speak for parents. If you go on our website (NHSCA.com), you will see that there is a space for human-interest stories.

Q I know you have to be politically correct in working with all these sports, but where does wrestling rank for you?

A No. 1, by far. Even though we are an all-sport organization, we started as a home for the Senior Nationals (in wrestling). For the first three years, we only had the event and in our fourth year, the word got out to all the other sports.

We kept getting calls from other sports saying we need the same leadership in high school as you provide for wrestling. It was 1994 when when we had our first high school sports festival down in Atlanta, Ga. We had basketball, soccer, tennis, golf and wrestling.

Just like in wrestling, when we had these events for the first time, it became very obvious that all sports need leadership at the high school level. Basically, that’s what we’ve been building up to for the last 18 years.

Q The event continues to grow with competitions in all four high school grades. How many full-time people do you have to run this event?

A We have a small core group of people who work. Joe Boardwine will soon be named our executive director. His wife, Missy, is our assistant director. My wife, Jeanne, is our office manager. We have myself as the present executive director moving up to the CEO of the organization. We have Jude Roth, who is our director of youth sports. My daughter, Jaime, is the director of character and leadership program. That’s our full-time staff.

They work very hard and are very committed and dedicated people who are underpaid for what they do, but do it for the right reasons. Their hearts are in the right place. These are people who are related, It’s great for husbands and wives to be working together in our environment. We try to make it fun. We take a family approach to it just like these events and it seems to work out well.

Q You started the NHSCA as a way to find post-season competition for your son, Robert. Tell me more about the birth of this organization.

A I wanted to find a national high school folkstyle championship that he could enter. When I did some research, I found out there was nothing like that which existed.

I started making calls to organizations. My first call was to the National High School Federation office and they told me they were against national championship events. But I did ask them to send me their rules so that we could conform to their rules.

My next call was to USA Wrestling and they told me they were not interested in folkstyle. They were focused on freestyle and Greco. The next call was to the National Coaches Association and they told me they were interested in college wrestling, but they had no interest in high school wrestling.

Basically, I struck out. At that point, I just decided to start an organization and that’s why we started the National High School Coaches Association, just to provide a home for the Senior national event. I founded the organization as a 501C3 non-profit organization which would be conducted by all volunteers. I believe in volunteerism and non-profit.

Q You have created a bridge between high school and college wrestling. Why was that important to you?

A I was a college coach at Bucknell. For eight years, I volunteered for this organization as the executive director. The misconception is that the reason the kids go to the Senior Nationals is for the college coaches. That is absolutely false. The reason the college coaches come to the Senior Nationals is because of the merits of the event. I let all my college coaching friends know that I was (originally) conducting this event in Pittsburgh, which was going to be a national high school wrestling event. It was going to be the elite high school wrestlers in the country and was going to be buffet for college recruiting.

The college coaches now promote the event to recruits that they have because they know if a recruit comes to this event and does well, they are going to have a good chance at having a great college career. If you look at the NCAA championships, 9 out of the 10 champions and 18 of the 20 finalists and 73 of the 80 All-Americans competed in the Senior Nationals.

Q Has the NHSCA ever thought about becoming more of a voice for wrestling?

A We are kind of a spokes-organization in our own right. Obviously, there are a lot of political barriers that you come up against. We’ve decided to do what we think is right and obviously you can’t intervene with a structure that is in place and have any type of positive impact. Instead of that, we try to work with our coaches and have them approach their state high school organizations; go through the proper procedures to get things changed.

For example, on this weight-certification program, I have not spoken to one coach who likes the program. There is too much administrative work for them. It does not solve the problem. There are is more abuse now than there has ever been. The information that is supposed to be submitted, is not submitted. There is no follow-up.

Coaches come to us if they have complaints about things. They think we are the governing body. We just tell them that we are going to provide a vehicle for them to get to where they want to go.
With the weight certification, we have long-standing coach, Tony DiGiovanni of Solon High School in Ohio, one of the most successful coaches in the country. He came up with the matside weigh-ins, which he felt the other coaches would like.

At every state tournament, there was a petition circulated by the NHSCA and it eventually got to all the coaches. We said that if you disagree with the weight certification, if you think a change needs to be made in the rules and support matside weigh-ins, indicate that on the form.

They collected all the signatures and sent them to their state high school athletic associations and to the National Federation office. There has been a tremendous response to this and there has been a lot of support. We have not gotten one phone call or one letter about a coach who was upset that we were promoting matside weigh-ins.

What happens from here? We have no control over. If the state associations do not respond, we will direct our coaches to their high school administration and let them submit something to the state organizations.

Q There are some people who think you are getting rich by holding these high school championships. What is your response to such comments?

A I wish I was, quite honestly. The more people we have in this event, the more work it is for this office. Since our salaries are set by our national board, I wish they would convey that information to our national board.

Q Is it simply jealousy?

A Absolutely. It’s that way in life. Anytime you are doing anything successful, some people are going to be jealous. It’s no different in this business. Unfortunately, at a time when sport needs solidarity now more than ever, a lot of these other organizations get very political, get very jealous. I don’t know of any organization who is not jealous of what we are doing. But we don’t pay any attention to it. We stay focused on our mission. We have a vision. We know exactly where we want to go and that’s what we stay focused.

Q With Joe Boardwine being named the executive director, are you retiring?

A No, I’m moving up to the CEO position. I’m working with the military. I’m working with the government. I’m working with corporate America. I’m working with national television. We’re building our sports hall of fame museum, which is going to be a $20-million structure. That is where my energy is going.

Joe Boardwine has been running the organization for the past year, the day-to-day operations. Every Monday, we have a four-to-five hour meeting, where I get caught up with what everyone is doing.
As long as you enjoy what you are doing, that is a form of retirement. I would like to go into a McDonalds and interview our senior citizens. Every person has a story to tell.