OSU’s John Smith is Building on the Strongest Tradition in College Athletics

By Darl DeVault

Of the handful of Oklahoma athletes considered the best ever, only one is recognized as a long-time successful coach: Oklahoma State University wrestling coach John Smith. Along with iconic sports figures Jim Thorpe, Mickey Mantle and Warren Spahn, Smith stands out as both legendary freestyle wrestler and coach.

Smith, 44, won everything available as an athlete in the amateur wrestling world, made a successful transition to coaching, and continues to “wrestle” almost 200 matches a year for OSU. Yes, wrestle: he contorts his body in empathy with his wrestlers to help will them into a better position with their opponent. It appears to some fans that Smith is telepathically prompting the athlete by moving as the athlete should, while coaching them with a soft voice from his chair or standing near the side of the mat.

And what a wonderful representative to the world of sports. “It is a privilege to coach the youth,” Smith said last year. “You may be the single most important person in that athlete’s career and (college) life; you may make a difference with that athlete that affects him the rest of his life.”

Just as important to OSU and many young wrestlers, Smith is building one of the most successful coaching careers in collegiate wrestling. In fact, the overall arc of his career is edging toward the most successful progression of any sports figure through public school, college, international competition and coaching.

Smith went from dropping his first five matches at 5 years old, to losing only a handful of times the rest of his mat career, including high school, college, international competition and the Olympics. He lost only one match on his way to two Olympic Gold Medals (Seoul and Barcelona). This merits commemoration: Del City High School 105-5, OSU 154-7-2 (finishing with 90 straight wins), 77-3 national freestyle record, and internationally – including the Olympics – a 100-5 record. This computes to his winning more than 95 percent of his matches. The span of six straight annual World-level titles is unprecedented for an American.

Smith graduated from OSU in 1988 with a degree in education after being three-time All-American and winning back-to-back NCAA championships as a Cowboy in 1987 and 1988. He began serving as an assistant coach at OSU in 1989 in the midst of huge success. The Cowboys won back-to-back national championships in 1989-90 under Joe Seay, and were runners-up in 1991. OSU Wrestling’s 34 national championships are the most ever in any college sport, testifying to the premier athletic program in all of NCAA Division I sports. Smith describes it as the strongest tradition in college athletics. No wonder Stillwater hosts the sport’s shrine, the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum.

In 1992, Smith made the progression to head coaching at the collegiate level by sharing co-coaching duties with Kenny Monday at OSU that first year. In his 18 years as head coach since 1993, he has led five teams to national championships. In 1993, 10 years after Smith graduated, Del City High School renamed its field house for him, complete with the installation of a life-sized bronze statue of him in his wrestling singlet, displaying many medals.

Some observers give Smith credit as the best technique coach today. Early in his college career, Smith created a stunningly explosive, low-penetrating lunge to grasp his opponent’s ankle and lower leg and wrap them up in a takedown. He has won an international award for his contribution to the technical side of the sport.

Smith’s innovative teaching skills rival his accomplishments on the mat and foster a philosophy he shares with other coaches: “The greatest motivation for a student athlete, especially wrestlers, is learning. Once they stop learning within a program, they start taking steps backward.”

Even a single year sounds like a career highlight reel for this stellar Oklahoman. Look at what he accomplished at age 24 in 1990: First, he was in the middle of dominating 136.5 pounds at the U.S. Freestyle Nationals, 1988-1991. He stormed the World Freestyle Championships, winning from 1987 to 1991. The first of those wins was unique, as he was the first American collegiate wrestler, and second-youngest at 21, to win a world championship. He accomplished that first world title with two broken fingers in one hand.

Smith’s first major international title was winning gold at the 1986 Goodwill Games, and defended the title by winning again in Seattle in 1990 to propel the team to victory over the last full Soviet team. From 1986 through 1990, his international record was 150-3. By 1990, he owned an unbeaten 28-0 record in World and Olympic competition, making him the most successful American wrestler ever. He finished with only one loss at that level, coming into the 1992 Olympics. Smith was so dominant, notching a technical fall in his pool, that even with a loss, his point total allowed him to advance to the finals and his second gold medal.

Smith’s dominance on the mat and his already rich career sparked a flurry of awards in 1990, including being the first wrestler to receive the prestigious James E. Sullivan Award, given to the nation’s top amateur athlete. The pinnacle of amateur sports awards in the U.S. since 1930, the Sullivan Award, voted yearly, recognizes leadership, character, sportsmanship beyond athletic accomplishment, and honors athletes with leadership skills and good character.

“As the first wrestler to be recognized as the best amateur athlete, I felt the only home for my Sullivan Award was at the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum,” Smith said. "It is my hope that by sharing my award, it inspires future wrestlers to dream big and never give up. Through hard work and dedication, you can reach your dreams and even surpass them."

The U.S. Olympic Committee named Smith the “Sportsman of the Year” in 1990. That same year, the International Wrestling Federation named him "Master of Technique” as the world’s best technical wrestler.

Smith has achieved everything for which he has ever strived as an athlete, only rarely not achieving that distinction on the first try, and leaving with a near perfect record on the mat. Dominance is a lifestyle when you have Smith’s talent. He lives it, he breathes it, and he expects his athletes to subscribe to his drive for excellence.

Because wrestling is an individual combative sport, it values how much an athlete dominates his opponent. In folk-style, if a wrestler pins his opponent, his team picks up six points toward the team victory. If a wrestler beats his opponent by 15 or more points, his win counts as five team points, which rivals the six points for pinning his foe. If the wrestler fails to pin his opponent but outpoints him to win the match, three or four points go toward a team victory. This difference in overall scoring of individual matches comes back to that combative dominance, where extra points are awarded to the team’s wrestlers who dominate their opponents in the nine minutes of competition.

Exploiting this dominance is Smith’s secret. He knows how to wring every point possible out of a match. His innovative techniques, such as his super-low, single-leg takedown move, have contributed to this dominance and earned him worldwide accolades and awards. At the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games in Atlanta, Smith was named one of the 100 Greatest Olympians of All Time by the International Olympic Committee.

At the most storied school in college wrestling history, Smith can already claim title as one of the most dominant coaches in its history. Smith has coached OSU longer than anyone other than the program’s founder, Ed Gallagher, and has the most victories as athlete and coach. He has built on Gallagher’s early dominance, beginning when the NCAA Division I National Wrestling Championships began in1928.

There are consequences from OSU winning 34 titles and being more dominant than the UCLA program in basketball and Notre Dame Football program combined – at the pinnacle of the sport for so many seasons, the OSU wrestlers are usually locked into what many sports insiders consider one the toughest and most challenging schedules. No walkovers here; almost every dual match and tournament provides stellar opponents at most weights.

Coming in the school’s third of four straight years at the top of the sport, Smith’s 2005 NCAA Wrestling Championship team was the second most dominant in the history of the sport. The difficulty of this dominance was heightened by the challenge of defending against opponents motivated by the opportunity to dethrone the champions. That didn’t faze OSU; they compiled a 21-0 dual meet record. Half of Smith’s starters were All-Americans, and three freshman phenoms soon joined their ranks when two placed and the other went out in the semi-finals.

The 2005 wrestlers cruised to the second most dominant NCAA Division I team title finish in margin of victory, 70 points ahead of second place Michigan. The team’s 38-9 tourney record propelled five Cowboys (half the weights), to national championships to tie an NCAA record.

That historic season was chronicled in a definitive book, Cowboy Up: John Smith Leads the Legendary Oklahoma State Wrestlers to Their Greatest Season Ever (Kim D. Parrish, Oklahoma Heritage Association, 2007). Parrish picked the perfect season to follow the Cowboys at every competition. The book is available in bookstores statewide, the museum store at the Gaylord-Pickens Museum, and through the association’s Web site at www.oklahomaheritage.com.

Smith wrote the foreword for the book and has been complimentary about its depth and historical accuracy. “In my wrestling life, and in the careers of my wrestlers, the line between being a champion and one who never sees his dreams come true is such a fragile and delicate wrinkle, and it often involves the mental processes more than the physical brawn,” Smith said. “Cowboy Up sheds light on the unfathomable mysteries of that process.”

At those same 2005 NCAA Wrestling Championships, Smith was one of 15 wrestlers honored on the NCAA’s 75^th Anniversary Team, commemorating 75 years of NCAA Wrestling Championships. His younger brother Pat, whom he coached to the last two of NCAA Wrestling’s first ever four-consecutive national championships in 1993-1994, joined him on that team. Part of this was the Smiths’ coaching and performance, plus the fact that for many early years, freshmen were not allowed to compete.

Smith was voted Big 12 Coach of the Year seven times. He has coached 23 individual NCAA champions, leading all active college coaches. No other active coach has produced more than three NCAA championship teams. Smith’s assistant coaches are athletes he coached at OSU: Eric Guerrero (1999) and Tyrone Lewis (2004).

By mid-February, his Cowboys had lost only two duals this season, falling to the two top ranked teams, Iowa and Iowa State, by a combined total of just 5 points. Oklahoma State is ranked fourth in the nation in the most recent NWCA/USA Today Division I Coaches Poll with a 13-2-1 record

Smith’s OSU wrestlers start their quest for a 35^th NCAA crown when the Cowboys compete at the Big 12 Conference Championships March 6, hosted by the University of Oklahoma.

“This year’s conference championship is shaping up to be one of the most competitive we’ve seen in a long time,” Smith said. “What I mean by competitive is that it could shape up to be a three or four team horse race.”

In 1995, the Del City, Okla., native of Italian descent married the former Toni Donaldson. The couple has five children: Joseph, 13; Isabell, 10; Cecilia, 8; Samuel, 5; and just added another son, Levi, born in late 2009. “My wife and I want to be good mentors to our children to make sure they are part of something good,” Smith said. “It could be sports, the arts, music … so most of our energy right now is supporting the boys in wrestling and the girls in swimming. We are going to see each child through the ups and downs of those programs and their education so they can be a part of something good.”

Smith followed older brother Lee Roy Jr., who won an NCAA title at OSU, to the school’s wrestling program. Lee Roy notched four Big 8 crowns and was a three-time All-American, won three silver medals in world competition, and became the first Smith to head coach, taking the helm at Arizona State. Brother Pat had the best career at OSU with four national titles. Mark, the last of the four Smith brothers, was a three-time All-American at OSU and twice Junior National champion.

Smith is now coaching two of his nephews in Stillwater. Redshirt freshmen Chris Perry and Zach White, sons of John’s sisters Cathy and Mary Ann, respectively, are starting another round of the Smith dynasty at OSU. Next year they will be joined on the wrestling team by another nephew, and a fourth nephew will begin playing baseball at OSU as well, Smith said.

Smith has been inducted into halls of fame stretching from his high school and national high school honors all the way to the International Wrestling Hall of Fame. State, national, wrestling magazines and sport halls of fame honor Smith as well. In 1997, Smith was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, and has also been named to the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame.

At the grassroots level, Smith provides leadership to the wrestling community by making time to attend various youth functions to display an ideal role model for up-and-coming wrestlers. USA Wrestling, the sport’s national governing body, has been giving away the John Smith Award to their freestyle wrestler of the year since 1992, when Smith first won his namesake award.

Smith was a co-coach of the 1997 U.S. World Cup team and head coach of the 1998 U.S. Goodwill Games team. He coached America’s 1998 and 1999 World Teams and led the 2000 U.S. Olympic Team, and recently shared his considerable experience as one of the 2009 U.S. Freestyle World Team coaches.