You don’t remember matches. You remember going on trips. I was blessed; we had a great team. It was very tight. I am still in contact with them today. We were blue-collar guys, fighting together on the same team. We did a lot of things together. Everybody had everybody’s back. We all pushed each other, and there was a high accountability. We had great leadership and captains. I came at the right time at Pitt for me. In regards to winning the NCAAs, my brother gave me a lot of beatings growing up. We wrestled so many state championships and the nationals in our bedroom. When I went to Blair, I saw improve- ments, and, hitting tournaments, I was beating some people I couldn’t beat previously. I wanted to win multiple titles for Pitt. That was my focus, to win as many titles as I could. In high school, I didn’t know what I could do. When I got to college, I didn’t want to have any regrets. I was going to give everything I had and leave it all out on the mat.
USA Wrestler: When did you decide that you wanted an Olympic freestyle career, and how did you put yourself into a setting where you could improve in the international style? Santoro: My biggest regret was I didn’t do any freestyle until
after college. I’d do a tournament here or there, but I didn’t train it. I was awful at it, by the way. I was at Pitt and I told Rande I wanted to keep wrestling. He encouraged me to look at Penn State. Coach (Hachiro) Oishi was there, and that’s who I lived with at the time. My style was not conducive to freestyle. I was terrible in par terre. I shot way too much and got front head- locked too much. He broke it down for me. He tweaked my style and helped me to improve at the international level. Coaches Oishi, (Rich) Lorenzo and (John) Fritz were part of the decision to go to Penn State. It was a great experience for me.
USA Wrestler: You placed in three Olympic Trials, including a runner-up in 1996, and was a national star for a decade. What were the biggest challenges and what were your strengths in freestyle? Santoro: I liked to compete. The hardest thing for me was training full-time. I was an assistant coach a good part of that. To do both was challenging. You are with athletes all year round and your priority is going to be the team. I didn’t do much freestyle until the end of March, then you try to get ready for the Open. When I was at Lehigh, I was fortunate Greg Strobel was here, because he could help me a lot during the year. The hard- est part was getting international training in. Takedowns were my strength, mostly single and doubles, trying to stay on my opponents and not give them a chance. Putting yourself in the best position is what I tried to do in freestyle. I had to make adjustments.
USA Wrestler: Your weight class featured Olympic medalists
Townsend Saunders and Lincoln McIlravy, national champion Matt Demaray, NCAA champion Terry Steiner and others. Talk about the challenge of wrestling that kind of competition. Santoro: That is what got you up in the morning. They all brought something pretty special to the mat. They were fun to compete with. There was a whole list of other guys you didn’t mention who were great. They were fun matches, because you knew they would wrestle you. Townsend was so explosive, Lincoln was just relentless. That is what you train for, just to wrestle. There was great depth, but I didn’t think about that. You knew you would have a bunch of good guys at your weight class every year. You didn’t know any better. You just went and wrestled because everybody else was doing the same thing.
USA Wrestler: Why did you choose to become a wrestling
coach, and how did your years as an assistant at Penn State, Duquesne and Lehigh help you learn to succeed in coaching? Santoro: I always wanted to coach. I told my mom at a young age I wanted to coach. She said you can’t coach, you have to have a real job. Maybe when I grow up, I’ll get a real job, but I haven’t done that yet. I observed a lot, watching coaches Lorenzo, Fritz and Oishi and how they interacted with each other and the team. Being with Gus DeAugustino was a great learning experience, because it was about building the team up. Coming back to Lehigh, Bob Latessa was here my first year. It was a great group of guys to walk into with like seven seniors. Greg Strobel came the following year, and it was about rebuild- ing that tradition. I was fortunate. I’ve been around a lot of good people, not just coaches but good people. In life, you have to surround yourself with as many good people as you can.
USA Wrestling: Working with Head Coach Greg Strobel, you helped turn around the proud Lehigh program. What were some of the key things that helped Lehigh take the next step as a pro- gram?
Santoro: When Greg got here, he said, if you want a really good wrestling program and really good academics, this was the place to be. And at the time he was right. The Ivys were just starting to get good at the time. There was not a lot of depth in the Ivy League, and Stanford and Northwestern were not what they are today. Our niche was great academics and great wrestling. We rode that and got a lot of good kids into the pro- gram. Greg did a great job making it a great team.
USA Wrestler: You had the opportunity to be head coach for the first time at Maryland. What were the biggest challenges when you arrived there, and what things were successful in turning the program around? Santoro: Life is about timing. That was a timing job. Debbie
Yow, she was an amazing athletic director for me. I will always be grateful to her for that. I started working in October. She believed in me. She had a great vision. She wanted to win a national title. She wanted to support the program and had a five-year plan for it. For me, it was hard to leave Lehigh at the time. We had a great year before and had everybody back on the team. We thought we could win a national championship in the next two years. But I also knew the opportunity was there. I had to jump on that. We were partially funded. We had five scholarships, and had to raise 4.9. It was up to each program, first-come, first serve, to raise the money. She got us up to 9.9 scholarships and that put Maryland back on the map.
USA Wrestler: What athletes from your Maryland teams helped bring the team to prominence in ACC wrestling and why did they achieve? Santoro: It was a bunch of guys who were mentally tough.
We were going through a lot of transition at the time. That crew changed the room and changed the attitude. Brendan Byrne, Steve Bell, Hudson Taylor, Mike Letts. They came in and were successful on the mat and brought a hard-nose attitude to the room. You didn’t feel great a whole lot. A lot of guys overcame injuries and setbacks. Probably the biggest person who got hurt and couldn’t finish his career was Josh Haines. He was the first big blue-chipper we got. Having Josh helped get Hudson, and having Hudson helped get Letts, and so on. You put these guys around the same weight classes and training every day. They all made each other a lot better.
USA Wrestler: When the Lehigh head position became avail- Continued on page 38
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