Gable inspires Harvard wrestling crowd

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HARVARD – Surrounded by black and yellow at a school where wrestling is practically religion, Dan Gable seemed right at home.

That the American wrestling icon was part of the Harvard Wrestling Club’s 50th Anniversary Celebration on Saturday made it one of life’s perfect moments. Gable was one of the most accomplished amateur wrestlers in U.S. history and also was the most successful coach in NCAA history with 15 national team titles.

Harvard has set a standard few schools in Illinois can match: 880 wins in 50 seasons, 10 individual state champions, 71 wrestlers with 35 or more wins in a season and three Illinois Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association Hall of Fame coaches.

Gable, 60, inspired the crowd of about 800 at the Harvard gymnasium for the Family Event at 5 p.m. Former wrestlers and people close to the program later met for the Adult Social Event at the Harvard Moose Lodge.

“Anybody can tell me anything and I can make a positive out of it,” Gable said. “That’s just the way I think. I lost my last college match [at Iowa State]. No one had ever gone without a loss through high school and college. I never really closed the book on that, but that match made me what I was in my profession.”

Gable talked about how it made him work harder and prepare even better as an Olympian and a coach.

“You think you’re at the highest level, but you never are,” Gable said. “There’s always another level [to reach]. My vision is always a little unrealistic. In college there are 10 weight classes, and I always wanted our [Iowa] teams to win all of them.”

Lance Shelton, a member of the Harvard Wrestling Club, had ties which helped the school line up Gable to speak. Gable had another invitation to speak Saturday night, one at a corporate event, but chose Harvard because he wanted to address wrestling people.

You can find an abundance of those folks in Harvard.

Don Hardle started the program in the 1958-59 school year, when they wrestled on mats made of horsehair. Chuck Riker coached the next two seasons before John Sciacca took over. In the past 47 years, the Hornets have had only three coaches – Sciacca, Dick Holtfreter and Tim Haak – all of whom are in the IWCOA Hall of Fame.

“I’m proud of the fact Harvard gets a lot of calls up here,” said Sciacca, 86, who still lives in town. “It’s a hell of a sport.”

Sciacca’s son, Jim, drove from his home in northern Wisconsin for the event.

“There’s a common vision, a common focus,” said Jim Sciacca, a former wrestler who graduated in 1967. “Everybody ascribes to that winning philosophy created over the years. Kids develop that can-do attitude with what they do.”

Harvard wrestlers from 1959 graduate Steve Redding to current senior Sergio Figueroa, the latest of 10 individual state champions and the Hornets’ lone four-time state qualifier, attended the event.

“It was great to see my old coaches and teammates,” said Lake in the Hills resident Jeff Putnam, who became the Hornets’ first state champion in 1983 when he won the Class A 132-pound division. “Having Dan Gable here was pretty amazing. The coaching continuity makes wrestling great here. We’ve had three coaches who invested their souls in the program. Even at the junior high level our coaches were always good.”

There was a slide show with hundreds of photos covering 50 years of Harvard wrestling before Gable spoke. Twenty lucky crowd members had their names drawn for autographs from Gable, the U.S.’s 1972 Olympic champion, after the event.

“There’s so much community backing here,” said Dave Gratz, a 1975 Harvard graduate and one of five brothers who wrestled for the Hornets. “It’s been a big wrestling family for so many years. Families grow up and then their kids keep it going.”

• Joe Stevenson covers high school sports for the Northwest Herald. He can be reached at 815-526-4513. He also can be reached by fax at 815-459-5640 or by e-mail at jstevenson@nwherald.com.