Snacks

This week's Snacks come from Teague Moore: Wrestled at Oklahoma State, where he was a 2X Big 12 Champion, 3X NCAA All-American, and the 1998 NCAA National Champion. In freestyle at the Senior level, he was a University World Champion, the 2002 U.S. Open Champion, and placed 3rd at both the 2000 and 2004 U.S. Olympic Team Trials. He has 20 years of NCAA Division I coaching experience, including 15 years as a head coach. He now runs his own company, The Wrestling Consultant, where he helps families navigate the world of college wrestling.

Below are some excerpts from our conversation, along with key takeaways and tips that can be applied to improve yourself as a Coach, Athlete, or wrestling Parent.

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Origin Story Tip: Early failure doesn’t define you—it can shape you. Missing the state tournament as a freshman might have been the best thing that happened. It forced him to figure out what would allow him to win. That turning point led to a breakout sophomore season and laid the foundation for long-term success.

"I definitely came out of a wrestling family. I'm the youngest of seven kids, and I had three older brothers that wrestled... I started wrestling competitively when I was five, but I probably was wrestling right when I came out of the womb.

Growing up in Western Pennsylvania, the wrestling culture is pretty deep. Once I got into it, I struggled. I had one of my older brothers, Ty Moore, who was a four-time Pennsylvania state champion and had a stellar high school career.

I was not that story. I struggled in youth. I had some success in junior high, and then early in high school, I failed. I didn't make it to the state tournament as a freshman, and then really started to find myself between that freshman and sophomore year.

Into my sophomore year, things really took off for me. I ended up being a state runner-up my sophomore year. I won the junior nationals, which is now Fargo. I won that my sophomore, junior, and senior year.

Then that led to me getting recruited at Oklahoma State. So my introduction to the sport was not full of success and accolades. I struggled for a number of years to figure out myself and what was going to allow me to win...

I've always loved the sport. But I hated cutting weight. I love the competitive aspect of it. I loved the one-on-one aspect of it. I played other sports growing up.

I played competitive soccer. I did triathlons as a kid. But wrestling is really what took hold of me. I stayed a multi-sport athlete up into high school. I ran cross country in the fall. I wasn't any good.

But I guess I made my full-time commitment to wrestling in that sophomore year of high school. I loved it because, win or loss, it was on me. The part that I struggled with was the weight management piece.

For the longest time, that was what I did not like about wrestling. But I learned over time that has to be a lifestyle piece. It can't be just when you're going to compete trying to lose weight. Once I figured that out, things started to change for me."

Parent Tip: Offer opportunity, not pressure. Present options—clinics, camps, tournaments—but let your kid choose to pursue them. Support their goals without making demands. Some of the most effective parents keep the conversation open and let their child’s motivation lead the way.

"My dad did not push me extremely hard. He presented opportunity. So he was always saying, “Hey, there's a clinic, and Wade Schalles is going to be teaching. Do you want to go to it?”

“Hey, there's another camp over here. Do you want to be a part of it?” He was never saying, “You have to go do this,” right? And then late in high school, when I started having my own success, on the freestyle circuit. Once I got to that level, my dad would just say, “Hey, where do you want to go compete? Just tell me what you want to do. Give me enough time so I can plan for it...”

So what I see happening in the sport right now, my advice for parents would be: as much as your son or daughter wants to do this—and you're able to do it—I say give them the opportunities if they want to do it and if they're willing to prepare for it.

I think that's why we have some kids at the high school level competing with our best senior level guys—because we have some parents that said, “Is this what you want to do? And if so, I'm going to help support you on it.”

I think a lot of parents do really well with this saying, “Here's the tournaments, camps, or clinics we can do.”

I see this all the time at my club. Parents will say, “This is what we can do. We're still going to do a family vacation. We're going to work your sport around that.”

Where I see parents being very successful is when they're having that communication with their wrestler and making sure they both want to do it.

I think the parents who do it best never make it a demand. It’s never, “You have to go wrestle in these duels because the coach is calling” or “You have to go make this weight and compete.”

I see some of those parents really try to push their kid because they think they're going to be really good. They just don’t know what it's going to take, so they push them to achieve it.

But they're 13, 14 years old. I don't know that they want to be cutting eight pounds for this competition. So that’s one thing I see—few and far between—but it’s out there.

Some parents see these kids succeeding at that level and think, “My kid is supposed to be there too.” I don’t know. With the history of wrestling in our country, there haven’t been a lot of kids this good, this young.

And I don’t know that that means your son or daughter has to be that good at this age also."

Coaching Tip: At the youth level, keep wrestling fun. Creativity matters—if kids enjoy it, they’ll stick with it. At the high school level, prioritize fundamentals over flash. Teach discipline, work ethic, and core skills that will serve athletes in any path—whether in wrestling or in life. At the college level, stick to your core principles and remember why you got into coaching. Don’t get caught up in the circus.

"So at the youth level—youth being all the way up through eighth grade—I really think that the wrestling coaches should find a way to make it fun. If you can find a way to make wrestling fun, number one, you’ve got to be pretty creative because this sport can be a real bear. But if you keep it fun at that age, then they’re usually going to continue on with it into high school.

For the high school coaches, I would really love to see more high school coaches dial in on fundamentals instead of flashy moves that we can make highlight reels with and those sorts of things. I would much rather see kids learning basic fundamentals of wrestling because whether they go on and wrestle in college or not, the fundamentals of wrestling can help you for the rest of your life.

Technically, if you wanted to go on and do jiu-jitsu, BJJ, or go into some other combative sport, the fundamentals of wrestling are a core foundation for any of the combatives. So I think that’s good and that’s positive. The work ethic for high school coaches—I think if you can teach kids work ethic and how to be self-disciplined, that’s a huge takeaway that will help them for the rest of their life.

And then college coaches—good Lord. This is why I don’t want to go back into college coaching right now. The world of college coaching right now is kind of bananas with all of these crazy rule changes and that sort of stuff. I see a lot more college kids now very self-absorbed, and it’s kind of the, “What have you done for me lately?”

So for college coaches, my only piece of advice would be: stick to why you got into it. If you wanted to get into college coaching because you wanted to help kids become better, then just stick to that. Let some of this other kind of craziness that’s going on—try not to buy into it.

Because I think if you just stick with, “Hey, I’m here to teach you how to properly wrestle and compete well in college,” if I stay grounded in that, I think you’re going to be better off in the long run. If you want to try to buy into building these kids into wrestling personalities or be the hot topic on social media so your program’s getting a ton of attention—I don’t know that that is going to help you at the core fundamentals of building a college program."

Athlete Tip: Always be a student of the sport. Always be willing to look, learn, and listen. Whether it's technique, training advice, match strategy—be a student of it.

"I heard this tip from Kendall Cross when I was in high school. Kendall was my older brother's assistant coach in college. And Kendall said to me, when I started having freestyle success, he said, look—always be a student of the sport. Always be willing to look, learn, and listen.

Whether it's technique, training advice, match strategy—be a student of it. And that's the one piece of advice for any wrestler at any level I think wins across the board. If you're a beginner wrestler, become a student of the sport. Figure out why stance and motion is so important.

Understand why the seven basic skills of wrestling are important. If you're a successful high school wrestler, become a student of the sport and see what the next level of wrestlers are doing. Why is their offense so effective? Why are their defenses so effective?

And that goes to the same thing with college wrestlers, international wrestlers. If you're always a student of the sport, this sport never stops evolving. Once you get into it and you think you've mastered something, someone comes along and shows you that you really didn't learn much at all of it.

And so that's my message to the kids I work with. Always be a student of this sport. There's always something you can be learning."

Negative Impact Tip: If your methods for cutting weight or training aren't sustainable or healthy long-term, they can do more harm than good. Don’t sacrifice your physical or mental well-being for short-term success—your habits today can create lasting damage. Choose practices that support both performance and long-term health.

"So I'll answer that from a couple of different angles. Number one is the athlete. I speak to this because my older brother Ty, who was really successful in high school, went through a bout with bulimia. It was all about cutting weight. He found that as an easy way to make weight.

But then, long term, there were all of these negative health impacts with it. By that point, he didn’t know any other way. So to the athletes, I would always say this—whether it's your weight management or your strength and conditioning, you only want to do to your body what your body can absorb or what is going to help you in the long term.

For young kids, that's kind of hard to see. For college wrestlers, it's usually a little bit easier. I’ll use the example of lifting: when a kid hits maturity and realizes, "Man, every time I go to the weight room, I get bigger, I get stronger." Yes—but if you go in there and try to do power lifts and deadlift 1,000 pounds, you could also injure yourself very quickly.

So just be mindful of the things and the practices you're going to go down the path of. Think about whether this is going to be beneficial for you long term or if it's something that has an immediate impact but isn’t sustainable over a number of years.

That’s from the athlete side. From the coaching perspective, I always adhered to this when I was coaching: every kid on the team has to be benefiting in some way from what we’re about to do. I've got to find a way that this is beneficial.

Even if I go into a practice and my best kid has a big match coming up in a dual meet or a tournament, and I’m going to make sure he’s prepared, the backup on our team—who may not be competing—I still want him to understand why we’re working on what we’re working on.

Everyone on the team is hopefully getting something out of every activity, whether it's a practice or a competition. Hopefully, everybody is able to learn from it and grow from it.

Lastly is the parent aspect. If there’s one message I could pass on that was super beneficial for my parents, it’s that they were always there to support me. It was never about them. It was never about them getting the spotlight, interviews, or any of that sort of stuff.

They were always doing it so that we could try and achieve our goals. And they let us have that limelight on the wrestling mat."

Wrestling Growth Tip: Lean into the dual meet format. Duals are easier for casual fans to follow, build team excitement, and create a clear scoreboard narrative. They're the best way to get new people in the gym and help them connect with the sport.

"Well, my first thought is that I think our sport could actually do better with fewer weight classes, especially at the high school level. I think it's very trying for a high school coach to fill—whatever it is now—14 weights. I think it's very hard for some high school coaches to do that.

And I would love to see us put an importance back on the dual meet. I think the dual meet is the best marketing and selling point of our sport. Now, a lot of people will argue with me because they're like, "Well, the NCAA tournament is the showcase of our sport and it's an individual tournament." Okay, I get that.

But if we're talking about the growth of the entire sport, if you want to bring people into the gymnasium and get them excited about wrestling, they're going to get excited because the team score on the board says that the home team is winning. And I want to be behind that. They might not know why a certain takedown works like it does.

They don't need to know the details of how the techniques happen. Just let’s make it easier for the fans to understand our sport and support our team. There is not a casual sports fan that would show up at any high school individual tournament and enjoy themselves, because time-wise, it's way over the top.

And the other part is you can't get behind the team race. I mean, at most wrestling events, you don't even know that there’s a team race going on. But at a dual meet, that's very easy to tell. And if we want our sport to grow, I think it's going to grow from the dual meet aspect."

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