By: Erin Madden
BEREA, Ohio - Baldwin Wallace University Head Wrestling Coach Jamie Gibbs has cultivated quite the resume at the collegiate level. He’s mentored several all-conference and All-American student-athletes, a national champion, received numerous accolades and hoisted several trophies above his head.
This past summer, Gibbs shared his coaching expertise with a new group of student-athletes: 12- to 16-year-olds as part of the Ohio All-Star Wrestling Team. The team tours the west coast, making stops at seven states to wrestle and sightsee, among other activities.
Athletes apply and are chosen to be part of the team each year, including Gibbs’ son Bodey; however, Gibbs initially wasn’t supposed to be one of the coaches until trip leader Bart Freidenberg gave him a call.
“To make a long story short, I was kind of the backup plan,” Gibbs said. “They had a coach back out and (Freidenberg) asked if I would be able to help. It started off that I was just going to help out for two weeks and it turned out I was there for four weeks of the seven-week trip. It was kind of a last minute ordeal.”
Gibbs was primarily responsible for coaching the training sessions, drove one of the vans and, generally, was with the kids all the time. Getting to share the experience with his son was an added bonus.
“I just got to kind of watch him grow and mature,” Gibbs said. “We did some of the sites, sharing some of those things was special. Some of the wrestling stuff was special and something I’ll always remember.”
The trip is about more than just wrestling, though, For example, every time a student came to breakfast with their shirt untucked, they had to do 25 push-ups. By the end of the trip, everybody had their shirts tucked in. They also interacted within the different cities - giving away team pins, helping people load groceries into their car or thanking veterans for their service.
“I think that’s probably the favorite part of the trip,” Gibbs said. “Wrestling is the glue that holds it together but it was the values that this trip leader tried to instill with getting out of their comfort zone and learning to communicate with others not on the team.”
While the kids themselves were stepping out of their comfort zones, Gibbs also learned a lot of lessons about how Generation Z communicates with others.
“You hear it all the time, this generation maybe struggles to communicate but they don’t,” Gibbs said. “It’s just different. I think they get mislabeled a little bit, it’s just - they communicate differently. I learned a lot. They’re pretty intelligent kids. It’s just amazing how equipped some of them are - some of the skills they have at such a young age - not from wrestling but just technology skills.”
The awareness of communication is something with which Gibbs was already familiar as he already coaches his collegiate student-athletes that way. However, working with the young wrestlers throughout the trip really reinforced the importance of sharing more than just a few words on the mat.
“When you’re willing to be firm and share your vision with them and how important it is to communicate and educate consistently, I think that's key,” Gibbs said. “Then showing them that you care beyond just the wrestling piece is huge and that you want them to be successful and help them outside of wrestling. I think that was reinforced even more.”
Gibbs can’t overstate the importance of experiences like the Ohio All-Star Wrestling Team and hopes that similar opportunities continue to happen for generations of wrestlers to come.
“It’s what we as coaches know, the values that athletics and sport and, in particular, wrestling with the discipline and the camaraderie and the relationships that are built, it helps expose those kids to what it’s really about,” Gibbs explained. “It’s the skills that you learn through the sport that are life-changing and the relationships, most importantly. I do what I do because of the relationships so I think they’re starting to value that more than the fun the sport brings them.”