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able, why did you choose to go back home and take on that opportunity? Santoro: We had just bought a house in Maryland. We thought about it for awhile when it came up. It wasn’t just an automatic decision. We were very happy at Maryland. Great people in the state, and a lot of support coming from the com- munity. But it was an opportunity to come back to Lehigh. It’s back home, where my roots are. I missed the Lehigh Valley wrestling. There’s nothing like it. It’s just a special place, with a lot of good people. The reason it’s good wrestling is the good people behind it.
USA Wrestler: Explain the wrestling alumni tradition at Lehigh, and what kind of environment that provides for the ath- letes and coaches in the program. Santoro: A lot of programs have one or two major hitters, and give a lot of money to the program. At Lehigh, it’s different. They don’t look at it as giving to the program. They look at it as investing in the student-athlete. They are thinking about the development of the athlete, how it makes them a better wrestler, a better business person, a better civilian. They are passionate. They want to see the team succeed at every level. It’s not just come here and be a national champion. You come here, be a national champion, and you know what, you can have a great career after college. One day, you will be giving back to the pro- gram. We have so many different generations of wrestlers who have given back to the program. It is just investing in people. You don’t see that at a lot of places.
USA Wrestler: Lehigh is an academic school. What kind of athletes do you seek to wrestle there? Santoro: You have to love to wrestle. If you want to be suc- cessful in college, you got to love it. You have to be hungry and want to be better. Everytime you go in that room, you have to want to learn. It’s no different than the classroom. If you attack the workout, the sky is the limit. The guys who love to wrestle, you don’t have to worry about them. They will make the neces- sary sacrifices, if you want to call it that. I don’t call them sacri- fices anymore because if you are really committed, it’s not a sacrifice, it is just who you are. We look for guys who love wrestling and take academics seriously.You have to think long term. This is not an instant gratification sport. You can’t think just right now. It is easy to fall into that in this day and age; how can I get that quick fix? Everything’s instant. But in wrestling, it’s not like that. You have to put your time in.
USA Wrestler: Your first NCAA champion at Lehigh was heavyweight Zach Rey. What did it take for him to win it all? Santoro: He was a freshman when I got here. Part of that was that whole cultural change. We need guys in the finals, pushing for national championships. You come here and want to win a national title. We have a long history of national champi- ons and scholar athletes. We had to get back to that you can do both here. Zach did that. Every year, he got a little better aca- demically, a little better in wrestling. Zach is a competitor. Of all the athletes I’ve coached, he studied his opponents more than anybody else. He was very hard to score on and used that to his advantage. He is a pretty neat person.
USA Wrestler: Of all of the athletes you have coached, both as head or assistant coach, who were the best wrestlers and what made them great? Santoro: There were so many good ones. At Penn State, I remember the first time I saw Jeff Prescott, I said he was the
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ultimate competitor. He was fun to watch. At Lehigh, Cory Cooperman was a lot of fun to watch at practice every day. Watching his mind work, he has a unique wrestling mind. He’s one of the best at breaking things down and figuring things out. You can see it in his style. Troy Letters could do unbelievable things on the mat that you can’t teach. Jon Trenge goes down as one of the best of all time never to win it. His work ethic and passion was amazing. He could do special things from all three positions. At Maryland, Hudson Taylor reminded me of Cory Cooperman with how he could break things down. You show him a technique and he would tweak it to fit his style, which is pretty unique.
USA Wrestler: The Lehigh Valley Athletic Club is a top train- ing site for Olympic hopefuls, with legendary Jeff Buxton coach- ing the athletes. How important is the club to Lehigh wrestling and for Team USA wrestling? Santoro: It is really important. We want the USA to excel at the international level. We are getting better every year, and the clubs are helping with that. In 1999, I was retired. We were sit- ting down and talking about how we need something when ath- letes come back. I wish I had a place to train fulltime and do freestyle wrestling 12 months a year. Greg Strobel and I got the club off the ground and it was a slow process. We were able to bring in coaches, and they could train freestyle on a regular basis. When I got back here, the vision was we had the LVAC, but we needed somebody to coach these guys daily. You can’t do that on your own. Jeff Buxton has a great wrestling mind. He sees things, and is always learning. He’s good at breaking tech- nique down and brings a lot of energy to the room.
USA Wrestler: What will it take for Lehigh to break Cornell’s grip on Eastern wrestling? Santoro: They have done a great job. Rob Koll does a tremendous job. I don’t know how many years in a row they have won it. We need to consistently bring in top recruits. We need more 4 or 5 star recruits on a regular basis that love to wrestle. We have a high price tag at Lehigh, and it’s hard to get in, so our talent pool is not big. Now we are competing with the Ivys so we have to be real selective in who we bring in and will be the right fit for Lehigh wrestling.
USA Wrestler: Talk about your current Lehigh team, and what fans should look for at the post-season tournaments? Santoro: We are excited about this group. We have nine freshmen and sophomores starting. We started off with four home matches. Sometimes, that’s a tough thing for a young team. They are wrestling at Grace Hall, a great venue. Our guys are almost too excited to wrestle in it, too fired up. They came out a little sloppy, too many nerves, because they wanted to compete so hard and do so well. They put too much on their plate. Now, they’ve settled into who they are. They are getting better every week. They all have a bright future.
USA Wrestler: Can Lehigh win an NCAA team title? Santoro: It can happen here. It is going to take the right kind of athlete coming here. Having a new facility will help with our recruiting. It’s state of the art, one of the nicest in the country. We just need to get students on campus. Once they are here, they realize it is a whole different world here. You walk into the admissions building and there is a big poster of the wrestling venue. Wrestling is a top sport on campus. We don’t have to have the best 30 guys in the room, we need to have the best 10. It could happen one of those years. There has been a lot of parity lately in college wrestling.
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