Los Angeles Olympic Games. What are your memories of that experience? Strobel: L.A. was a great experience. It was my first Olympic Games. My wife and I both went. Donna worked as a volunteer with the secretariat. I was National Teams Director. What was memorable was Steve Fraser becoming the first Greco Olympic champion with a headlock against Frank Andersson, Jeff Blatnick winning the gold after overcoming cancer and when Bobby Weaver won and ran around the arena with his kid. I was working on the inside. We weren’t filling the seats, even though it was sold out. The corporate people didn’t use the tickets. There were a few thousand people outside each day. I talked to the people running the event. They agreed to let us sell general admissions for the empty seats. We filled the gym each day.
USA Wrestler: How did the National Teams program, which provides support for elite athletes, come about, and why was it so important for our international success? Strobel: When Dave Miller was hired as Executive Director in 1988, we were talking at the National Juniors in Cedar Falls. He asked me what was the single most important thing we could do to help the national team. I said we needed to pay our guys. It was legal. We needed to put some money on the table. My idea was to get 10 sponsors, one for each weight class, and to keep these guys in wrestling. If we can do that, we can direct our National Team. They would go to the camps, and do what we wanted, because they were professional athletes. I remember Bruce Baumgartner at the time saying that he can’t retire now. We kept Bruce from 1988 to 1997, because we started the National Team program.
USA Wrestler: What were your top memories from your years as an executive on the USA Wrestling national staff? Strobel: What I enjoyed was designing a fair trials and devel- oping training systems. They did not have fair trials back with the AAU and we did that. In my mind, we really didn’t have a system, either. Now we do, with our national coaches in place. Having a system helped us to win the World Championships as a nation.
USA Wrestler: What were some of the rewards and chal- lenges you faced as coach with Team Foxcatcher? Strobel: If you were just a national champion there, you were a nobody. You needed to be a World champion or an Olympic medalist to get any respect. I say that I got my doctorate in technique there. We had great athletes. One of the fun things we did was what we called a new tradition. Whenever a World or Olympic champion came into the room, they had to show their best stuff.
USA Wrestler: You coached Dave Schultz for many years. What kind of athlete and person was he? Strobel: He was a savant about wrestling. What I picked up from Dave is that he had a childlike simplicity. He wasn’t afraid to ask questions. That is tough for men, who won’t stop and ask directions. He didn’t care. If he didn’t know, he would just ask. I learned that from Dave and I do that now. This has nothing to do with wrestling. It was about all things in his life.
USA Wrestler: You also coached Bruce Baumgartner. What made him such a great champion, and what were you able to do to help him succeed? Strobel: I worked with the heavyweights by default. All of our coaches then were middleweights or lightweights. I worked out with the big guys. Bruce’s last loss to an American was in 1982,
and he went on until 1997. He wasn’t a state champion in high school, and could have been a several times college national champion. When he graduated college, he did win nationals once. He wasn’t satisfied. He had an extreme desire to prove himself and be the best in the world. You don’t do it for the money. You need an extreme desire to be the best. Hopefully, I helped him some with technique. What I did do is I chased away the demons. He had a tendency to doubt himself at times. I chased those thoughts away. I kept it simple for him. Obviously, he did really well.
USA Wrestler: What was it like to transition to a being a Div. I coach at Lehigh, and what were the biggest challenges in your early years there? Strobel: I got the job at 42 years old. I didn’t want to be that old when starting with a Div. I program. I was new and fresh to that job, but for 12 years, I was doing exclusively freestyle and Greco. I had to learn the NCAA rules and about recruiting and it was challenging. I enjoyed seeing the team develop, and watch- ing the fans at Lehigh. The fan base grew exponentially. We built a program with great coaches and athletes.
USA Wrestler: You coached the 2000 Olympic team in Sydney, Australia, which featured champion Brandon Slay and four medalists. How talented was that team, and what stands out in your mind from that experience? Strobel: We had a talented team. I worked with Kerry McCoy and the heavyweights. The training camp in Canberra, Australia was a special time. What sticks in my mind was Cary Kolat, and the controversial match he had. He had that happen to him at the World Championships the year before. During his match, he had a three-pointer and I told him it wouldn’t stand up and that he needed to score more points. It got overturned. That was a tough thing to take. He was so talented. When I was coaching McCoy, I wish I knew more about his opponent (Artur Taimazov). At that level, you want to give athletes the best advice. It is a regret that I couldn’t give him the correct advice. Nobody had seen him much, and the opponent was really good.
USA Wrestler: What was special about your two NCAA champions at Lehigh, Rob Rohn and Troy Letters? Strobel: Rob Rohn was talented. Every year, he would find a way not to do the job. He got too nervous. His senior year, his mantra was “Relax. Have Fun. Be the Champion.” I said that to him all the time. It took the pressure away. His final nationals in Albany was amazing. In the finals, he was down 14-2. Then he did the old cement job, and ended up pinning him. Troy Letters was a national champion as a sophomore. His best match was in his NCAA semifinals bout as a freshman against Tyrone Lewis. It was the best collegiate match I ever saw. If you can find it, watch it over and over again. He has a great feel for wrestling. Without trying, he made it easy.
USA Wrestler: What motivates you to stay involved as a leader with USA Wrestling? Strobel: I have been involved a long time. Ten years ago, I had been on the board and committees a long time, and I was going to get out. I remember hearing a committee going down a path, and it is one we had gone down before and it didn’t work. I remembered the quote from Edmund Burke. “All that is neces- sary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” If you are not involved and it fails, it is your fault because you weren’t involved.
I would like to see wrestling grow and provide opportunities for others like they were provided for me.
25 USA Wrestler
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