By Brooks Hatch
Corvallis Gazette-Times
The sense of deja vu permeating the Valley Football Center media conference for new Oregon State wrestling coach Jim Zalesky was palpable to those who attended a similar event for football coach Dennis Erickson seven years ago.
The message from the ex-Iowa mentor was virtually identical as Erickson’s, down to the concise, to-the-point answers.
Zalesky said OSU must shoot for Pacific-10 Conference championships and national awards, that settling for less was pointless.
“At Iowa, I had expectations ” not put on me, but of myself ” to win nationals every year,” Zalesky said Tuesday. “If you don’t have pressure on you, you’re not fighting for the top spot.
“It means you’re down below.”
He said hard work and commitment matter, not the fancy weight rooms and other facilities missing at OSU ” for the moment.
“You can have a weight room that looks real good, but if nobody goes in there, (it) isn’t doing anybody any good,” he said. “The (practice) room doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s got mats.
“It’d be nice to have a great-looking facility for recruits, but that’s all show. It’s what you do in the wrestling room that’s going to make the difference.”
He talked about dominating regional recruiting, about convincing home-grown talent to stay put instead of fleeing for supposedly greener pastures.
“There are kids in Oregon that can beat kids in Iowa,” he said. “There’s good wrestling in Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, California.
“You can get good kids in this area and be the best. I believe that.”
But mere words didn’t rekindle memories of Erickson’s benchmark Jan. 12, 1999, statement that the dark ages of Beavers football were over. It was the aura, the personality oozing from the guy in the dark suit, blue shirt and orange and black-striped Oregon State tie.
Call it charisma, call it dynamism, call it leadership. Whatever it is, Zalesky has it, and it shouldn’t take long for the 45-year-old Iowan to put his own stamp on a storied program, much as Ralph Miller, the last coach to come to Corvallis directly from Iowa City, did for basketball in 1970.
It isn’t often you can pair “Oregon State” and “sleeping giant” in the same sentence but that’s applicable with OSU’s most successful program.
It has NCAA champions, Olympians, 895 dual wins, 44 conference titles, a loyal fan base and a healthy endowment. It’s one of just four programs from a Bowl Championship Series-conference west of the Rockies.
And now it has a coach with, in essence, a major chip on his shoulder and fire in his belly. Erickson arrived with something to prove, smarting from a firing in Seattle he thought unwarranted. Iowa canned Zalesky despite three NCAA titles, a fourth-place finish in 2006, and a Hawkeyes heritage as deep as Nile Kinnick and Floyd of Rosedale.
Zalesky glossed over his dismissal with some Erickson-style self-deprecating humor.
“I think they wanted me to take the Oregon State program,” he said, wryly.
The tongue buried in his cheek, however, was covered by some tightly clenched teeth. He’s clearly eager to prove that someone in Iowa City was a Herky-jerky and pulled the trigger far too soon.
“I’m not going to say much about it,” Zalesky said of the back-room politics that led to his unexpected trip on the Oregon Trail. “My mom said, ‘If you don’t have anything good to say about something or somebody, don’t say anything.’ That’s my comment about that.
“But I always think you need motivation, more motivation, keep that inside you and let it motivate me here.
“I just look at it as adding fuel to the fire sometimes.”
Three years after his departure, Erickson’s footprints are everywhere at OSU. He was the catalyst behind the Reser Stadium expansion; the Truax Indoor Center, which beget the OSU Softball Complex; 21,000 season tickets, and the attitude that OSU should be a Pac-10 player, not a perennial doormat.
Without Raising Reser, there’s not enough money to keep Pat Casey and Kirk Walker, or to hire big names such as Zalesky, Terry Liskevych and LaVonda Wagner.
Zalesky jokingly said that OSU athletic director Bob De Carolis promised him a new wrestling room “by next year.”
That won’t happen. But otherwise, all bets are off.
Somebody’s got to be the final piece of the fund-raising puzzle for the Gill Coliseum annex, which four OSU administrations have dangled in front of Beaver Nation like the proverbial carrot on a string since the late 1980s.
Why not Zalesky?
Beavers are builders. Even the ones just cutting their teeth.
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