Over his 21 years at the helm of the Michigan wrestling program (1978-99), former head coach Dale Bahr made numerous contributions to the longstanding tradition and continued growth of Wolverine wrestling. Bahr accumulated a career record of 221-119-6 and ranks second only to the legendary Cliff Keen among Michigan’s career wins leaders. Bahr coached two NCAA individual champions, 43 All-Americans and 13 Big Ten champions. Among his standout athletes are three members of Michigan’s current coaching staff: Joe McFarland, Kirk Trost and Mike Kulczycki.
Under the tutelage of former Wolverine standout and coaching legend Harold Nichols (“Nick”) at Iowa State, Bahr was an NCAA champion and three-time All-American, placing among the top three at 145 pounds each year and finally capturing the title as a senior in 1968. He took over Michigan’s head coaching role in 1978 and remained at the helm of the Wolverine program through the 1998-99 season before retiring from coaching and taking an administrative position as an assistant athletic director charged with overseeing nine sports and the U-M summer camps.
Just a day after his return from an Iowa State wrestling reunion, Dale leaned back in his office chair and chatted about his coaching development, the agony of being a spectator and how wrestling has changed over the last four decades.
,» On his asset as a coach …
“I went through a pretty tough program at Iowa State, and I realized that you had to work really, really hard to win. We conditioned hard and we were really good on the mat. I admire wrestlers that work hard in the top position and really break a guy down and ride him. Too many kids these days will give an initial jolt to the guy when they’re on top and make an effort to stop his first move, but then they let him go. I admire guys who will refuse to let their opponents go. I think it takes an especially tough-headed wrestler to do that because it’s the hard work of wrestling — to ride somebody hard, wear him down and refuse to let him go and let him score. We worked hard, and we worked hard at the top position.”
,» On coaching styles …
“I was always good on top. That was the way I wrestled, and so that was my emphasis in coaching. It’s probably the same with Joe. I can see the things that Joe teaches being the same things that he was successful at when he was wrestling. I think that happens a lot — a team mirrors their coach. Much of the time, you coach the things that got you there. If you believed in them for yourself, you’re going to believe in them for your team.”
,» On college coaching lineages …
“There are really three or four wrestling family trees in the country. There was Edward Gallagher at Oklahoma State, who coached Cliff Keen, who then coached Harold Nichols. Harold Nichols coached me, I coached Joe McFarland, etc. Dan Gable is a part of that same family tree because Cliff coached Nick and Nick coached Dan. So there is really this family tree in the Midwest that originates with Gallagher, carries through Cliff Keen and really develops from there. Billy Sheridan from Lehigh developed a family tree out east as did Port Robinson at Oklahoma. So most wrestlers and coaches can find their way back up these family trees to three or four key people.”
,» On his college coach, Harold Nichols …
“Harold was a little bit different. We didn’t work on a lot of technique around him. I think Cliff was more of a technician. Nick had a lot of good guys in the room and really just let everybody fight it out, and whoever proved the toughest got on the mat. We just got together at this Iowa State alumni event last weekend, and we reminisced about the shock of coming from high school to the Iowa State wrestling room, where it was really survival of the fittest. You walked into the room, and you just got beat up so many times. We had 26 full rides for wrestling back then, so we’d be three or four team deep with state champions at every weight. It was a fight just to survive. So Nick didn’t really teach us a whole lot of technique; I think we learned from one another. But the toughest guy in our room was usually as tough as anyone in the country.”
,» On envisioning coaching careers for U-M’s current staff …
“Joe McFarland was always a technician, always wanted to learn more about wrestling, always wanted to learn technique and how things worked. He went to the Olympic training camps and wrestled internationally. I knew he was going to stay in the sport. Kirk (Trost) was a little bit more laid back, so it was harder to tell whether he would end up in wrestling or not. But once he did, it was natural for him. He certainly offsets Joe, who is an organizer and driven. Kirk is more a humanitarian; he works on people’s heads. They play off of each other and do a really good job of it. Mike (Kulczycki) was a good all-around technician, and he was pretty proficient on his feet. He had some serious injuries while he was here, otherwise he could have done so much more. I don’t know if he really planned a career in coaching. But since he’s been here, I’ve seen him improve by leaps and bounds. He loves wrestling and has a good eye for talent. He complements the other two, and I think all three of them work well together. Because they all wrestled at Michigan, they can sell the Michigan program really well. They truly love Michigan, and that will come through when they recruit.”
,» On standout teams during his coaching tenure …
“I think the 1989 team was really well balanced with several really outstanding individuals. We had Joe Pantaleo and Mike Amine, who were NCAA finalists, and John Fisher, who is still Michigan’s career wins leader. With the addition of the other guys on the team, who were just solid as wrestlers, we were able to compete with the best. There was a Big Ten dual-meet tournament that year because they wanted to attract more publicity for Big Ten wrestling. So all 10 teams were there in Indianapolis. We advanced to the finals as did Iowa, and we beat Iowa in the championship meet. There are only about six schools in the Big Ten over Gable’s 25 years that can say they beat Iowa, and that particular Michigan team did beat Iowa. That was an outstanding team because they had the right combination of balance at all positions, and we had four or five great wrestlers. I think they finished fourth or fifth in the nation that year. But that’s just one team that I look back on as really outstanding. There was another team around 1996 that had (Jeff) Catrabone and (Airron) Richardson and Jesse Rawls Jr. We had five All-Americans and finished fifth in the nation that year too. That was a really nice team.”
,» On seeing more balance in the Big Ten Conference …
“I enjoy the parity of the Big Ten. It used to be that there were three or four tough teams and everybody else was almost an automatic win. It’s certainly much more interesting now. You’ve got teams like Illinois, Northwestern and Ohio State that were never very tough in the past but are now typically fielding good teams. Minnesota was in the same category, but they have gotten to the point where they’re always tough now. The consistently competitive teams were Iowa, of course with Gable there, Wisconsin and Michigan. It was always a battle to see who would place second behind Iowa, and they would be considered the unofficial champion. I really like it now the way that it is. I like it that each match in the Big Ten is an adventure. Michigan has done quite well with the current makeup. With three dual-meet championships, we’ve certainly been able to hold our own.”
,» On getting involved in coaching …
“I always envisioned myself coaching. When I came out of Iowa State, I started as an assistant to a junior high wrestling coach before moving to an assistant coaching position at Algona High School, which was the defending Iowa state champion. I was given the idea that if things worked out well, I would become head coach. We won the state championship again that year, and I did become head coach. We were state champions for the four years I was there. Then Nick happened to call. I envisioned myself as a high school coach but not necessarily a college coach. I figured I would develop a powerline at Algona and stay there and just do it again and again. But one of the Iowa State assistants, Les Anderson, left, and Nick came up and asked if I would consider being an assistant. I figured what the heck; I can always go back and be a high school coach. So I took that job. Then Michigan called, and again I thought, ‘Why not?’ I’ve been here ever since. So I did envision coaching, but if you’d have asked me when I graduated from college whether I’d be a coach at a Big Ten school for 21 years, I’d probably have laughed.”
,» On feeling pressure when taking over the Michigan program …
“Michigan had had some great kids. In fact, I remember sitting at the Hilton Coliseum (Iowa State) in 1974, Rick Bay’s last year of coaching, and watching his heavyweight leading a majority of the championship match before eventually losing. Otherwise, Michigan would have been the NCAA champion that year. But after that, the program lost the all of the stars they had at the time. Of course they still had (Steve) Fraser and (Mark) Churella. One ended up being an Olympic champ and the other a three-time NCAA champ. But overall their balance, especially in the last year with injuries and sickness, was gone. They didn’t have a great year, so I didn’t really feel the pressure. But once you’re here at Michigan, you do start to feel it because every sport here wins. You look around, and if you don’t have a winning program or if your team isn’t top five in the country, you start to feel bad. It’s not that anyobdy else puts pressure on you, you put the pressure on yourself. I’m sure that’s what Joe’s feeling now. Everybody understands that position, but it makes it tough on you as a coach.”
,» On having to fill the role of a spectator …
“If I get up in the stands, I tend to get really into it and start yelling when I sense a stalemate or stalling. For the Hofstra meet though, I was pretty quiet, and I just sat back and watched the meet. I guess it depends on my attitude coming into that particular night. Sometimes I really get involved, and I really get nervous. Michigan has been winning a lot in recent years, so it makes it a whole lot easier. I get so nervous at the NCAAs that sometimes I can’t even watch the last 30 seconds of the match if it’s close. I just want us to win so bad. It was hard to watch Ryan Churella’s match at nationals last year, and it just left a huge pit in my stomach as it did everybody else. When you’ve been there and coached kids like that and you know how hard they work, and I knew how much Ryan wanted to duplicate what his father did. So something like that will literally ruin your day. Probably in the position I’m in now I should stay away from that because I don’t need that agony. I got enough of that in the 21 years I coached. It’s hard to be a spectator. Wrestling is the easiest job because you can go out and do something about it. You control your own destiny. When you’re a father, a fan or a former coach like I am, you can’t do anything but watch, and it’s nerve-wracking to watch, squirm and yell. You really, at that point in time, have very little control over it. All the coaching and all the work has to be done before a wrestler step on the mat. Once they step on the mat, I think all the yelling you do as a parent or a coach is simply to calm your own nerves. It’s a fluid match, so by the time you yell something, that action is often already past and they’re on to something else.”
,» On his current adminstration position …
“I supervise nine sports and oversee the summer camps. We have almost 9,000 kids that come to the summer camps every year. With all the regulations and the NCAA rules, we need to have supervision to make sure that everything operates properly, so I’ll do that as well as divvy up dorm space and all the facility time on our athletic campus. I had successful camps myself and I coached alongside all these current coaches, so I think they acknowledge that I know what I’m doing. As far as supervising sports, I work with a lot with budgets and other administrative issues. If anything comes up, both positive and negative, I’ll work with the teams. I also make an effort to travel with my different teams at least once during the regular season so I can get to know the coaches and the kids. I also try to get to as many Big Ten tournaments as I can as well as the regionals and NCAAs. When you travel for three or four days with the coaches and sit with them during the offtimes, you really get to know them a lot better. And the athletes are the same way. Instead of just being somebody that just comes in and talks with them a couple of times a year, I get to know them by their first name. It’s a fun experience for me, and I think the kids appreciate it. I want them to know that administration is there, and we’re supporting them.”
,» On changes in wrestling over the last 30-40 years …
“Technique really hasn’t changed very much. At this Iowa State reunion, we were talking about the techniques and skills of today and decided that singles, doubles, high-crotches and good riding are the same now as they were 20 years ago. I could probably take guys out of the 1960s and throw them in right now, they could still dominate. The only technique that is different is countering. In a takedown situation, we get a lot more people diving through their legs, trying to get an ankle to neutralize and force a stalemate. We didn’t do that back in my day. I think we had better technique — stayed solid, squared up and stopped people up front rather than diving underneath. Perhaps the biggest difference now is that the weight classes are deeper. It used to be that I never really worried about an NCAA match until I got into the quarterfinals or semis. We were Iowa State, and we just expected to get to the semis before we would get a tough match. Now, wrestling is good all over the country, and you can get guys from Hofstra or Boise State coming out and giving you a run. When I wrestled, weight classes were five or six deep with good wrestlers, but now these weight classes might go 15 or 20 deep.”
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