Snacks

This week's Snacks circles back to my very first interviewee: Andrew Hochstrasser. During our last interview, he was a full-time club coach. Since then, he has transitioned into an NCAA Division I coaching role at UVU. Now, with a year under his belt at the D1 level, I thought it would be fun to reflect on a few key differences and revisit some topics to see if his perspective has changed.

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Q: What do you miss most about coaching in the club scene?

"Man, I think the relationships. And again, I've only been here one year, but we've already had seniors leave. So I think with the club scene, the relationships can last quite a bit longer. It was kind of cool to be with them a long time and see them develop.

I think you really get to be a part of a kid's life and then push them into the next level. You kind of have this little bird, you teach it to fly, and then you watch it fly. Where now, it's like the birds are coming in, flying already, and then when they leave, they're just gone.

That's just how it feels to me right now. But yeah, I think that's probably what I miss the most—really getting to spend a lot of time with the kids.

I'm sure I'll get that with these freshmen that came in, since I'll be with them four or five years, it'll be similar. But in the club scene it was really almost like they were my own kids, you know."

Q: What do you like the most about coaching at the college scene?

"I like the high level. I enjoy wrestling and the details and definitely the intensity. So I think with youth wrestling, there's a fine balance. We've talked about this—how hard do you push a kid?

How many tournaments does he go to? How hard are practices compared to what are we really trying to do here? We want this wrestler to stay in as long as possible so they can develop more and learn what they need to learn from wrestling.

At this point now where I'm at, we want to win. We want to bury people. We want to do the best we can every time we go out. And I like that. I'm extremely competitive!

So I enjoy that part of it where I get to do that. Where I feel like with youth wrestling, it's competitive, but you definitely have to restrain yourself a little bit because they are kids and you want them to stay involved for a long time."

Q: Going from club to college coaching, what’s been the biggest surprise for you—something you didn’t expect?

"There's obviously a lot of travel. Maybe it's because we're out in the West. There's a lot of travel, so that was a little bit more than I had expected.

And then the amount of office work that college coaches have to do is crazy. I don't know if it's for every sport and for every school, but definitely for us, there's a lot of office time. That's where things get done, and things have to get done in order to be a successful program.

So that was a surprise. I knew there was going to be some, but there's definitely a lot more than I thought. It's pretty much like running a small business.

We've got to fundraise, we gotta talk to donors, we gotta talk to boosters, we gotta talk to administration. We gotta recruit kids, and then we gotta fill out paperwork for the kids to get them on campus and buy them flights.

We have to go through the travel office, it's like we're running a business just to make it possible for these kids to wrestle...

But it's been cool, I'm getting to learn a lot and figure new things out."

Q: Has your perspective on the parenting side of wrestling changed now that you’re working with young adults instead of youth wrestlers?

"Sometimes it seems like the kid is going to be the kid no matter how you raise them. And sometimes it seems like maybe you could try a little harder and make a kid better at certain things.

I know that I wasn't the most studious athlete on campus, and I don't know if that would have changed if my parents could have changed that. But I think the more that parents can encourage the kids to do things on their own, the easier the transition is and the better off those kids are once they get to college...

But grades are usually an easy indicator—not always—but grades are a great indicator of someone that cares enough about something that they're gonna get things done...

Another indicator—really respectful kids are probably the easiest ones to recruit, to sign, and then we don't have to worry about when they get here because you know they're gonna get their work done."

Q: What successful patterns have you noticed in athletes who’ve made it to the highest level that you didn’t see as much in the club setting?

"That's a hard comparison because a lot of the successful kids that I coached in club were multi-sport athletes. They would do extra work, offseason or extra privates or whatever, but they didn't do it right after practices.

But that's hard for a kid that's, you know, he's 10 years old, practice gets done at 8, and you expect them to stay after. I don't think that's necessarily it, but I think that's a big thing that you see when kids are older in college.

These kids, they dip really fast after practice and who knows where they're going—go home, shower, or whatever. But usually, the successful kids are the ones that linger around a little bit longer.

Whether they're just hanging out with their teammates, or they have questions, or they get extra work, or jump on the treadmill or whatever it is, they just tend to be there a little bit longer.

I remember Justin Ruiz telling someone "The extra time you're putting in doesn't have to be a half hour every day or an hour extra. If you do five minutes every day for a week, for a month, five minutes adds up. Now all of a sudden, you just accumulated 20 extra practices compared to everybody else."

Yeah, so I think that's something that whether they recognize or don't recognize, really high-level athletes do.

Good wrestlers are disciplined. They don't talk, they don't dink around, they listen. Same in college, same in the youth level. You can tell."

Q: When it comes to developing young athletes versus developing older athletes who have already been shaped by other coaches, what’s the major difference between the two?

With young athletes and the process of development, you can say, 'Hey, do this. It might not work at first, but keep doing it.' They might fail a bunch, and then all of a sudden, they take off.

They can really take a concept and then fail, fail, fail, and all of a sudden they're just super successful with it and they can dominate. Where I think the older athletes, you're trying to maybe teach a concept and it's getting balanced in their head—do I do it, do I not?

And they do it and they fail. Then they don't want to do it anymore and you try to hammer it back in. Look, this is the way we need to do it.

And then they do it, and they still fail. I think to grasp the concept and really buy in takes a little bit longer. It's harder to be like, hey, I really trust this process...

I would say the buy-in and just being able to trust it is a little bit harder with the older athletes. I don't blame them. It's a hard thing to jump into a new concept or idea when you've been successful enough to get here and your moves and whatever works really well."

Q: Looking back, is there anything you wish you had done differently as a club coach now that you’ve coached at the college level?

"Yeah, I’ve had a couple moments where I thought I should have done some stuff different. I think I’m very open to however you want to wrestle—a certain style or whatever—because I didn’t get kids that were only with me as a coach. I wasn’t with them all the time. Some of them had other coaches or their high school coach.

I think I wish I would have just enforced the style that I wanted them to have, rather than maybe be so open to “What are you good at?” and let you do kind of your own thing. I just feel like we could have seen more success and got kids good at a couple different things.

The other thing is, I don’t know if I really knew what I wanted that to be. Now, looking at it, I know I would have spent more time in these areas rather than let all the kids do the things that I wanted them to do. The area I think I would have focused more on would have been defending.

I was very like, “Try to get them to shoot.” I wanted all the kids to shoot a lot, and we’d just lay on that sword and shoot till we die. Eventually, you guys are going to be really, really good at attacking. It’s hard, and I think a lot of kids failed a lot and maybe didn’t enjoy wrestling so much because it was a hard uphill battle.

Until you finally get really good at an attack or a couple attacks and then finishing those attacks. Which I think is the way I went through my wrestling—if I just shoot and shoot and shoot, that’s how you score, right?

Yeah, I think I would have spent a lot more time developing kids on front headlock position, defending stance, snapping them down, and go-behinds and that kind of stuff. I think it would have made winning easier, faster.

Yeah, maybe we just would have been this defensive, frustrating team that nobody liked, but it would have been really hard to score on."

Q: What advice would you give to youth coaches who want to best prepare their athletes for college wrestling?

"I mean, grades. Grades are the best, easiest, number one thing. If you don’t have grades, at least with us—yeah, and that might just be us. I can’t speak for all the other colleges, but it means a lot to our program.

It’s not like we’re a difficult school to get into, but if you can come in and get good grades and we don’t have to worry about that, then that’s great because then you get to wrestle every semester, you know?

Yeah, and then I think you got to be offensive—being able to score points. You got to be a wrestler that can score points to win matches. That’s a great thing."

Q: How has your definition of success changed since moving into college coaching?

"I think it’s just changed into more—more winning rather than development, which I think is… hopefully it’s acceptable. Because I think, you know, where we’re at, we’re still developing kids.

But now you see, and you need to see, the results from it. Where youth wrestling—sometimes they’ll do all the right things, and you’re still not going to beat a certain level athlete or kid that is just a lot higher level than you."

Q: What’s the biggest hurdle college coaches face that most people might not realize?

"I think it’s always going to be funding. You know, we’re always… there’s things we want to do or need to do or would like to do, but if you don’t have the money to do it, then it’s not gonna happen.

You know, we’ll have to not go to that tournament or not fly out here, or obviously we can’t bring kids on because of financial restrictions or whatever. But yeah, I think that’s… the finances are probably the most difficult.

And I think just because you’re a D1 program doesn’t mean you’re sitting in a good spot like, you know, maybe others are."

Q: When I say, “How do we grow wrestling?”—now that you’re a college coach, what comes to mind? Is it the financial side of things, viewership, adding more college programs, increasing participation numbers, or something else?

"I think all of those things actually play a huge role. I think participation builds fans. Participation, at least if it’s run correctly in the individual state, brings money.

I know Utah does a really good job of being able to fundraise and has a good developmental system where they’re building accounts they can use to help kids, keep them in wrestling, and give them more wrestling opportunities.

I think when you raise the numbers, you’re going to get more money. When you have more participants, you’re going to have better competition, and the kids are going to get better.

I think there’s a fine line of certain people using wrestling to make money. It helps to have competitions and stuff like that, but at the same time you’ve got to have quality and keep it legit.

One thing they’ve been trying to do, and I’ve been around some really good referees, is pay referees more. It’s not easy to think or be like, “Hey, we should pay referees more,” but man, when you get quality referees, I think they deserve to be paid.

That doesn’t just mean they get every call correct, but if we want quality matches to be called correctly, I think you’ve got to start paying referees more. Figure out how to make a system where when they do better, they do get paid more."

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Growth Bite

This week's Growth Bite comes from Andrew’s insight on developing young athletes vs. already developed athletes.

He mentioned how young athletes can be told, “Hey, do this. It might not work at first, but keep doing it,” and even if they fail over and over, they often keep going—and eventually, they take off. But with older athletes, it’s harder. They try it, fail, and doubt creeps in. They might abandon it before giving it the time it needs.

This made me think about how important it is to let young people fail. Their lack of fear, their willingness to try, and their ability to bounce back without being crushed by mistakes—that’s something we lose as we get older. The saying “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” comes to mind. As we age, we get comfortable in our habits and successful routines, but that comfort can become a ball and chain.

We start to fear failure more. We avoid being uncomfortable. And that mindset can hold us back from chasing dreams, learning new skills, or making needed changes.

Maybe this week, we can take a lesson from the young wrestlers and be willing to fail a few times—trusting the process until it finally clicks.

Community Treat

This week's Community Treat comes from an observation made by Jason Nolf and Johnni DiJulius while running wrestling camps across the country. They shared something they’ve noticed about ‘gatekeeping’ opportunities for kids to get better: