Written by Sandy Stevens
University of Arizona president Peter Likins and his wife, Patricia, have not only shared 50 years of marriage; they’ve also shared duties as coaches of a wrestling team.
The Likinses’ story begins at age 13, when the couple met in their hometown of Santa Cruz, Calif. At 5 feet 5 inches tall, “Pete” Likins began wrestling in high school after one of his football coaches said, “Let’s start a wrestling team.” Likins placed second in the state championships at 154 as a junior, then won the title and outstanding wrestler honors as a 145-pound senior. He also captured a Junior AAU championship. Because Likins had skipped a grade, he graduated with his brother, Tod, who as senior placed second in the state following a referee’s decision in overtime and went on to captain the wrestling team at Berkley.
As a youngster, Pete Likins was already experiencing the value of being a wrestler. “It has nothing to do with matches won and lost,” he said. “It had to do with my believing in myself. I was young for my class and small for my age, and my hand-eye coordination was nothing to write home about. “Then came wrestling. I found myself able not to just try hard but to prevail. It enabled me to become an athlete. I needed to prove myself to myself,” he said. “As a kid with all these insecurities, I’d get into fights. Wrestling gave me security; I didn’t have to fight anymore. I learned through wrestling that even though I’m a little guy, I don’t have to worry about the big guys. It removed from me a source of self-doubt.” At the same time, Likins’ future wife was a cheerleader. “That meant she was exposed to the sport as a kid,” he said, “so you learn the sport in a very deep way.”
Likins acted as Stanford University’s wrestling captain and went undefeated in dual meets for four years. “But I never had a season without getting beat,” he said. “I went through high school and college testing myself,” he explained. “I learned through wrestling how important it is to persist, to prepare and to bounce back in defeat. My defeats were rare, but it was critical to my self-confidence. I developed a sense of myself as able to compete with the best of them.”
With little guidance at Stanford from a gymnastics coach who simply supervised the wrestlers, Likins watched a teammate named Vaughn Hitchcock (who would eventually coach Cal Poly to eight NCAA team titles). Hitchcock perfected a move that involved attempting a fireman’s carry; when the opponent typically flattened out in defense, Hitchcock tied up both arms and did a sit-out, putting the wrestler on his back with Hitchcock’s back on the opponent’s chest. “I called the move ‘The Hitchcock,'” Likins said. “I spent the rest of my (wrestling) career making a living on that hold.”
That career ended as Likins received civil engineering degrees at Stanford and MIT, later earning a doctorate in engineering mechanics at Stanford. He began his professional career as a developmental engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology. He later served as a member of the engineering faculty and as an associate dean at UCLA and as a Ford Foundation Fellow.
Then Likins and his wife moved what he calls “an adopted, interracial, All-American family” of two sons and a daughter to New Jersey, and he became Dean of Engineering and Applied Sciences and University Provost at Columbia University. Son John wanted to wrestle, but there was no team. “Finally, I decided we’d start a team for kids 14 and under, so my wife and I became parent coaches,” Likins said. With a squad numbering 75, Patricia Likins coached the first- and second-graders after school, as John demonstrated moves. “She, too, has a plaque on the wall that says, ‘Thanks, Coach.'” Likins said.
The family moved to Pennsylvania in 1982, when Likins was named president of Lehigh University. John won a state championship as a junior and placed second as a senior for Bethlehem Lehigh Catholic High School. Occasionally, Likins would drop in for workouts in the Lehigh wrestling room. One day he and trustee Kirk Franklin, a former NCAA champion and three-time All-American for the Engineers, agreed to a three-minute match that would be videotaped and shown before a televised dual meet. The referee would be another former national champion, Mike Caruso. “I was about 55, and Kirk was about 45,” Likins recalled, “and we agreed not to do any defensive moves, since we figured fans wanted to see offense.” Once the match got underway, Likins said, “Kirk forgot how old I was, I think, and he was beating the hell out of me.” Then Likins pulled off “The Hitchcock” to close the match ahead, 6-5. “But then Caruso said he was giving one point to Pendleton on principle,” Likens said, “so it ended in a tie.” The next day, the university president dragged himself out of bed, tape recorder in hand. “I listed the top 10 reasons to say ‘No’ the next year,” he said. “They were the top 10 places I hurt.”
Likins spent 15 years as Lehigh’s president before moving to the University of Arizona nine years ago. He will retire from that post June 30, shortly before he turns 70 on July 4. But he credits his days as a competitor and coach as a basis for his successful tenure at Lehigh and Arizona. “I learned to be a professor in the classroom,” he said, “but I learned to be a university president on the wrestling mats.”
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