Carl Poff. He was a great mentor for me. After a year, I went to Oklahoma State, when Joe Seay offered me a similar position, and I got to focus on my freestyle. I had a great opportunity to work out with Mike Sheets every day. I still believe he was the toughest individual I met in wrestling. I won every open tourna- ment I’d enter, such as Omaha and the Southern Open. There weren’t as many competition opportunities then. But I’d go back into the practice room and I couldn’t score a point on Sheets, and he was lighter than me. We had coaches Joe Seay, Greg Strobel, Bruce Burnett there, a great opportunity to learn a lot of freestyle in a short time. I’d work in the morning at a tire compa- ny loading trucks, then I’d go to college practice and then freestyle practice with Sheets, Kenny Monday and Chris Barnes, all great people. My whole attitude changed in one year. It helped me as an athlete and a coach.
USA Wrestler: When did you decide to be a wrestling coach, and what attracted you to the profession? Cody: The reason I coached at Oklahoma State was to com- pete in freestyle wrestling. I was around great people at Oklahoma State. I was offered my first full-time coaching job at Nebraska. Tim Neumann brought in some great recruits and great people. It was motivating to be around them. I started to think if I were a coach, I could do something I love everyday. I decided then I wanted to pursue coaching.
USA Wrestler: What did you learn while working as an assis-
tant coach for Nebraska and Oklahoma State that made you a better coach? Cody: At Nebraska, there was a lot we had to do on our own.
We had to move mats. We had to raise money. I learned the business side of coaching there. Coach Neumann was innova- tive in that area. He was building a program and making the sport better. At Oklahoma State, a lot of that is already done. You can just coach in the room and recruit. I learned something every day technically at Nebraska and Oklahoma State. At OSU, they were all about coaching and wrestling. I picked their brains, even when they didn’t know it. We would go to IHOP to eat and talk wrestling. I’d talk to Pat Smith, Mark Branch, John Smith, everybody. What I learned I’d pass on to the athletes.
USA Wrestler: Tell us about some of the star wrestlers you worked with during your years as an assistant coach, and what made them great competitors? Cody: At Nebraska, I was in charge of 167, 177, 190 and heavyweight. The individuals I worked with at that time helped me decide to be a coach. We had great guys like Scott Chenoweth, Corey Olson, Tolly Thompson, Chad Nelson, Brad Vering, Ryan Tobin, Rulon Gardner and Joe Malacek. It was a lot of fun. They had a fierce competitive attitude. I remember guys like Rulon Gardner coming in and getting their butt kicked every day. It was great to see those guys develop. A lot of them stuck around for a few more years, and they would work with the new guys coming in.
USA Wrestler: What were factors in taking the head coaching
job at American University, a school that considered dropping the sport before choosing to upgrade the program? Cody: I hadn’t been a head coach yet. I had been an assis-
tant for a long time. I had been ready to be a head coach for 10 years, but I didn’t have that opportunity. I got a call from their athletic director Tom George, but I told him I wasn’t interested. He talked me into it. He asked me to come out and check it out. I realized when I got there that the boosters and alumni were so passionate about it, as much as at any program I’d been with. I
told them that it would take awhile to build it and they said they would be there behind us. Guys like Alan Meltzer, Lauren Danielson, Chris Lombardy were passionate. I said I would do it and give it a shot. It was really nice for me to be back on the East Coast. I hadn’t been there since 1983, and now I was five hours away from my family.
USA Wrestler: Explain the most difficult challenges you faced in building the American program early on. Cody: I had seven guys in the program and by the end of that first season, I had four. All of my 4 ½ scholarships were tied up. I couldn’t recruit. It costs $50,000 to come here. I would call and they wouldn’t know where American University was. We made a hard push to get into the EIWA so I could tell recruits we were in a great conference. The wrestling room was a mat and a half. I had one part-time assistant when I got here. They talk about starting from scratch. I felt we started below scratch. Wrestling is a blue-collar sport and to get that kind of individual into American was a challenge. When I got my scholarships, I had some people tell me to split them up and fill the room. I said I would take the scholarships and invest in a few athletes I felt would be successful and fill in the blanks. I was trying to focus on getting somebody on the podium so they would know who we were.
USA Wrestler: Tell us about your first All-American at American, Daniel Waters, and what were the factors in his abili- ty to break through? Cody: With the guys I brought in, I had to be creative to set
the stage so they could train like they do at other schools. I needed guys to buy into everything we said to them. Waters was a Navy SEAL before going to Penn State. He was a hard worker. At Penn State, he didn’t crack the lineup, winning like five matches there. He had two years with us. In his first year, he was the national win leader at his weight class, but blew out his ACL at the Easterns. As a senior, he won 30 matches and got to the podium. He bought in that we didn’t have the same kind of room he had at Penn State. He was also very interested in getting better technically.
USA Wrestler: You have had success working with foreign such as past All-American Muzaffar Abdurakhmanov of Uzbekistan and current AU star Ganbayar Sanjaa of Mongolia. What helps these athletes to flourish there? Cody: When Muz came here, there were a lot of people from Uzbekistan in Washington, D.C. Once we got Muz on a recruit- ing trip, he was very comfortable here. There is a huge popula- tion from Mongolia here for Ganbayar. These are high-octane guys. They are not well-suited for the grind of this level of wrestling, week in and week out. They are used to competing one time a month. We kept them fresh. Their background is dif- ferent than American kids. If you pull the reigns in a bit, they will be successful. And they can really wrestle. With both of them, you work with them from the bottom position. I have had some great success with kids from Colby CC, where they both came from.
USA Wrestler: What made American’s first NCAA champion Josh Glenn such a great wrestler? Cody: My sister called me about him. She was involved with the wrestling club up in Johnson City, N.Y. She said there was a guy with great leadership ability and qualities. That is when I started recruiting him. What caught my eye was his maturity as an 18 year old. His mom was single and raised three boys. One Continued on page 30
25 USA Wrestler
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