Editor’s Note: In less than five years, Pat Santoro, 41, has made Maryland a very competitive wrestling program; not only in the ACC where they’ve won 21 championships, but on the national level, where they were ranked among the nation’s top 25 teams this year. The former two-time NCAA champion from Pittsburgh, who spent nine years as an assistant at Lehigh become leaving for College Park, Md., spoke to W.I.N. Editor Mike Finn before this year’s ACC tournament, which Maryland hosted.

Q What was it about Maryland that drew you there?
A I like the location. It’s a couple hours south of Pennsylvania and near New Jersey and next to Virginia. It’s an attractive school for general students; being so close to Washington D.C. and Baltimore. The second thing is academics. Coming from a school like Lehigh, academics is important to me as a coach. I can go into someone’s living room and tell them they are going to get a quality education. What sold me was (Maryland’s) athletic director Debbie Yow. When I came in for my visit, she told me she was making a commitment towards the sport and she has done that. I’m pretty excited about the potential here.

Q The Des Moines Register recently did a story on Div. I coaching salaries. Yours actually ranked among the top ten, which suggested to me that Maryland was indeed making a commitment to wrestling. Was that one of the first signs you saw (in their commitment) or was there more than that?
A It was definitely more than that. Coming out from being an assistant where you don’t make a lot of money and not focused on what you are making; rather you want an opportunity. I just felt that we had an opportunity to win here.

Q Maryland is located in the heart of basketball country. What would Maryland make such a commitment to wrestling?
A That’s a good question. We hear so much about lost programs over the years, but when you break things down, wrestling is not a very expensive sport if you want to be successful. There are not a lot of overhead costs; basically just a wrestling room and some singlets and you are good to go. The location here is great. They started learning that Maryland is close to several hotbeds of wrestling and the state of Maryland high school wrestling has gotten better over the years. They didn’t just take a shot at this. They did some research and looked at why they believed we could win. They let us do some fund-raising to put some money into scholarships and we’ve reached our goals so that we are fully-funded. When you are fully-funded, it does change the game a little bit and gives you an opportunity to compete against the top teams.

Q Why does the Title IX dilemma not hurt Maryland?
A We have 27 sports and in compliance with Title IX so that’s not an issue. Debbie does a great job and pretty much is on top of what is going on. She is about what is fair to all athletes. From my first day here, she said it was unfair that people would not be able to wrestle at some programs and she said we have to do what is fair for wrestling and what is fair for the athletes. That’s why we have 27 sports, which is a lot of sports.

Q What specifically did Maryland want from you?
A They wanted a competitive program. If you follow Maryland’s overall athletic program, we are pretty competitive nationally. There are a lot of sports that are in the Top Ten nationally and that’s what they want to see in wrestling. They want a team that contends for a national championship. We talked about that in the interview and still talk about it. Every coach’s goal is to win a national championship. Now we have an administration that wants to help us.

Q What will make Maryland successful? Winning the ACC every year or becoming a top ten team?
A The ACC is so competitive right now and you will see it get even better with additional qualifiers over the next few years. Every coach here in the ACC wants to win on the national level. It’s not just being competitive in one conference. As coaches, we believe that as our conference continues to get better and are one of the top two team in our conference we should also be a top ten-ranked team nationally. We are not there yet, but I think our conference is on its way.

Q Can you talk about how tough of a dilemma ACC schools have had in that the conference only had 14 national qualifying spots?
A We will still feel the sting this year. In the past, we probably didn’t deserve more than 14 spots. Our biggest argument is that we have many programs that are fully funded and the game is changing for us. I read something where we are the fourth toughest tournament to get through to get to the nationals now. We have a number of Top 20 kids. It’s changing because programs have made a full commitment to wrestling now. We’re still not sure what is going to happen next year with determining qualifiers, but we have an opportunity to jump 10 qualifiers in one year if you conference is doing all the right things and everyone is getting better. We have a young team with nine underclassmen starting, but so does Virginia, Virginia Tech and NC State. This is a very young competitive conference, which makes it very exciting for ACC wrestling.

Q If the ACC were to continue to get better nationally, do you think other southern conferences like the SEC be more interest in starting wrestling?
A I would hope so. Think of the programs that have been dropped and were successful; Florida, LSU and Clemson. They were great programs and are in great campuses. The kids love the weather. Once we get more opportunities for kids, it will continue to grow and become very competitive.

Q Do you feel that Maryland is a very fertile hotbed that people are finally just discovering?
A Sure. What I’ve seen in the state of Maryland since I’ve been here the last four years is see a tremendous increase in the talent level. A lot of that has to do with the talented young coaches on the high school level, some of the clubs. Cary Kolat moved here a couple years ago and had done a great job with the young kids. They are coming of age now and going into high school. You are seeing that talent level rise. It’s similar to what Sean Bormet did in Illinois.

Q How do you think the new NCAA qualifying methods affect a program like Maryland?.
A My understanding is that they will look at strength of schedule. They are creating a formula that hasn’t been finalized yet. My understanding is the more top 30 kids you have, the better shot you have of taking more kids to the NCAA tournament.

Q What will you do to help your kids earn more Top 30 honors?
A Scheduling. Every year we’ve been here, we’ve improved our schedule. You need to have a competitive schedule and see the best teams in the country throughout the year. We were fortunate in that we were able to see a lot of good teams over the past year. Next year, we are adding a couple more teams. It’s important for our kids to see what the best teams are doing so that when we get to the national tournament, we know what we need to do in order to win.

Q In financing a program, recruiting is very important. It almost sounds like programs are going to have to find even more money to finance trips to find the best teams and tournaments like Las Vegas. How do you generating enough money for this challenge?
A We try to keep our alumni involved. We do weekly and bi-weekly newsletters and keep them involved in the program. Every great program is built with an alumni base or friends of the program. If you look at most of the better programs, they have one or two donors and a really big following. We are starting to generate that now. We’ve had some people step up and gave us some scholarship money. Now we have other things to do. We are building up our College Park Wrestling Club, including looking for a coach for that. We are fund-raising to increase our budget in order to go to the Midwest, where we see teams that we don’t normally see on the East coast.

Q National Wrestling Coaches Association executive director Mike Moyer has talked about the importance of coaches becoming more like CEOs for their program. Are you that new breed of coach?
A I was an assistant so long that I’d like to be more involved in coaching. A lot of coaches do well in just getting involved in recruiting. I want to get personal with the kids. I want to get to know them and see them in the room. But you do have to run your program and trust your assistants. I’ve been very fortunate to have great assistant coaches. It’s difficult. There are parts of the job you don’t understand until you become a head coach. There are decisions you make now that you never thought you would make as an assistant. There is a lot more to the job than teaching technique.

Q Some people may look at Maryland as a stepping stone program to bigger programs. Is that what you saw or can Maryland be a consensus top 20 program.
A Your goal is to be the best you can be. It always bugs me when I see people use certain jobs as stepping stones. This is a great opportunity and make the most of it. As a staff, we want Maryland wrestling to be great. We can only control what is happening right now.

Q Do you have wrestler who could be the poster boy to describe what you are trying to do at Maryland?
A We have two kids, Hudson Taylor and Mike Letts, who have stepped up and are doing things right, including in the classroom and socially. They are working hard in the room. Just to see the growth they’ve both made, compared to where they were as freshmen, is the most rewarding thing a coach can get. They bought into the system. They are working their tails off and trying to get good. Part of it is that they are self-driven.

Q Maryland is relatively close to Philadelphia, which will host the NCAAs in 2010. What do you want Maryland wrestling to look like once the national tournament comes back to the East coast?
A What I’ve always envisioned about Maryland wrestling is that the wins and losses will take care of themselves. I want this to be a program that kids know they are going to get a great degree and that they can win a national championship, become an All-American and achieve their goals. If they want to wrestle beyond that, we can help them with that, too. We want kids to come here and trust the program and trust that they will win here.

Q Is it a dream or a probability that in five or ten years from now that people will talk about Maryland wrestling like others currently talk about an Iowa or Oklahoma State?
A That’s what we are hoping. We are in it for the kids; not to see what others are talking about you. These kids put a lot of trust in us. What’s special about this team is that every one of them trusted us to come here. They had a vision about building something great.