132-pound freshman and a 185-pound senior. I didn’t think I could stay down to wrestle 190 in college, and I didn’t want to wrestle heavyweight. I loved playing football, but it changed a bit in college. As hard work that wrestling is, it’s still wrestling and that was fun about wrestling every day. With football, you’d go in at 2:00 and come out at 7:00. You’d have meetings, drill the situations. There was a lot of pressure. Guys’ jobs were on the backs of 18-22 year olds. It wasn’t fun dealing with the day- to-day. I missed wrestling. I knew if I was going to wrestle, the only place I would do it was back at Wisconsin with Russ Hellickson, who was still competing on the international scene.
USA Wrestling: You were a two-time All-American in college. How do you assess your college career? Hull: It’s the journey you look back at. Unless you were an Olympic champion, or you just want to be an NCAA champion and then just walk away, most people didn’t accomplish their goals. It’s all about perspective. Even those people with a high level of success will say they didn’t achieve what they wanted to. You have to put this perspective in. Did you put the effort in, did you enjoy the journey and would you have done it again? I answer yes to all of those things. I’m disappointed with what I ended up doing. I’m not dissatisfied. If it is just the end result, then when you look at it worldwide, man, there’s a whole bunch of losers out there, and that’s just not the case.
USA Wrestler: What allowed you to improve in the Olympic styles and pursue the Olympic dream? Hull: Coming back to Wisconsin, I did enjoy freestyle and Greco more. It was a better fit for the way I wrestled. What was great about the situation at Wisconsin when I wrestled was that it was like a national training center before there was one. We literally had more than half of the United States team training there. When I first came back, I don’t believe I got a takedown for a month. I was working out with Russ Hellickson, an Olympic silver medalist, Ben Peterson, an Olympic champion, Laurent Soucie was sixth in the world and Ron Jeidy was the NCAA champion. John Peterson, another Olympic champion, would come down from time to time. And there were foreigners coming in to train with us. It was a great situation for a young kid.
USA Wrestler: You are one of the few to compete in the
World Championships in both freestyle and Greco-Roman for the USA. Why did you wrestle in both styles? Hull: I was a little better at Greco initially and we weren’t as strong at it as a country. I won the FILA Junior national title then lost to Dan Severn in a best-of-three for the freestyle team, so I decided to go Greco at Junior Worlds. There was an opening on the Senior Greco team. It sounds nice I was in both of them. The best guy retired, it wasn’t strong and I made the team. I went to the World Championships and earned a pilot’s license wrestling a young man named Frank Andersson the first round in his home town. After the 1980 Trials, I decided to concentrate on freestyle. From 77-80, it was a specifc decision to wrestle in both the freestyle and Greco nationals. Steve Fraser, Dave Schultz, Bill and Jim Scherr all did that. It was a benefit, even if you were going to focus on one style. Getting those skills in the other style was beneficial.
USA Wrestler: After trying out for the 1984 Olympic Team, you stopped competing. What was the reason for turning your focus to coaching at that time? Hull: The plan was that I was going to continue wrestling until 1984 and then make a decision. Even when I was done in 1980 in the international style, 1984 was the focus. I ended up sec-
ond in the Olympic Trials, losing to Ed Banach in the final match. I beat Bill Scherr the round before in two extremely close matches that I won on criteria. After not making the team, I decided to wait a year to see what I wanted to do. That year, in 1985, Bill Scherr wins the World title in freestyle at my weight, and Mike Houck wins the World title in Greco. To be truthful, I knew what it took to train, and I wasn’t willing to do that any- more. I’m married, I had a little girl and life changed. I was hap- pily moving on. I had given it a try. I would have to be the best in the world just to make the U.S. team. Bill Scherr and Mike Houck were extremely talented, hard working, athletic individu- als who earned their titles.
USA Wrestler: Talk about your years as an assistant coach at Wisconsin, and how that improved your coaching ability? Hull: I knew in 1980, I was going to be around until 1984. I was a graduate assistant. It kind of fell into place. It wasn’t that I was focusing on being a college coach. All those guys who were living right there, making U.S. teams. This wasn’t a long- shot process. I was around people who were doing it. It was about making U.S. Olympic and World Teams. The other stuff took second fiddle. Even when I was an assistant up to 1984, the focus was to make the Olympic team and do the best job I could coaching. After I was done competing, the focus on coaching took center stage. I had the opportunity to work with Duane Kleven, and then Russ Hellickson became the coach. I saw what it took and the skill set. We were a Top Ten program through that time and I was around people who had success.
USA Wrestler: You were head coach at Purdue, coaching an
NCAA champion in Charles Jones and improving the team’s performance. What were the challenges and rewards of coach- ing there? Hull: When Russ Hellickson moved on, and Andy Rein was hired as head coach, it came down to that Andy and I were the last two for that job. That is when Bill Trujillo called me at Purdue. He said he would be out in three years and wanted to know if I wanted to come down and make a difference there. The neat part was being involved in something we moved from one level to the next level. Bill Trujillo came on as a part-time coach and won one match in the Big Ten and I was his first full- time assistant. He was a really good coach and had a great eye for talent. You couldn’t go head-to-head with the big boys. But a lot of good people develop later. When we finished seventh in the country when I was head coach, most of those guys Bill had brought in. He deserved more credit than he got for that by bringing the right people in. We were seventh one year and 12th the next. It was a great experience, but it was difficult. Purdue didn’t have the level of resources that some of the other schools have. I enjoyed my time there, the wrestling part of it. I put the right people around me. My two assistant coaches were Jeff Jordan and Mark Schwab. Those two guys are still big names in the sport today. A lot of the credit for where we got goes to those two.
USA Wrestling: Why did you accept the USA Wrestling National Teams Director position in 1992? Hull: It was a family decision financially. Economically, it was
a difficult time at Purdue. This opened up. Mike Houck talked to me at the NCAA Tournament. I hadn’t applied. He talked about overseeing Greco and freestyle and I’d done both. I thought about it. I was getting involved with the international again, working with the national organization and the Olympic Committee. Colorado Springs was one of the places my wife
Continued on page 35 25 USA Wrestler
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