Athletor

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Mike says he wears two hats, the dad hat and the coach hat. Matt Ciampa texted him to say he was wrong, so we got him on to argue about it. Thirty-five years of coaching, and he still can't find the seam between the two. 🔗 Championship Fundraising Challenge - raise your first $500 in 2 weeks or your money back: https://www.athletorlive.com/product/championship-fundraising-challenge 🔗 Full Championship Fundraising Course: https://www.athletorlive.com/product/championship-fundraising-course ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 - Cold open 1:03 - Busting balls is a muscle: Fargo, Jersey, and the rooms you can't joke in 5:03 - The text that started it: "You vehemently disagreed with me" 6:56 - Twenty years of coaching before he ever sat in his son's corner 12:16 - "It doesn't sting more when my son loses" 14:10 - Where the dad hat is real: when your kid is the one who's upset 15:55 - A kick in the ass and a pat on the back, with 12 inches to spare 19:14 - "You can't control how you feel, but you can control how you behave" 20:27 - Coaching off the mat: house rules, golf foursomes, and not pleasing everybody 23:53 - "There's only one hat," and it's not dad or coach 25:00 - The one thing he wants every athlete to take with them 26:48 - Coaching women: hyper-competitive drill partners and the communication problem 30:03 - "Wrestling's anything, anytime something's difficult" 31:10 - Should wrestling be made more spectator-friendly? Careful what you ask for 32:54 - Community then vs. now: like-minded kids, spread across the map 36:29 - "Wrestling's almost turning into a sport of affluence" 39:30 - Why folkstyle off-season events saved the middle-of-the-pack kid 42:05 - The 0-4 tenth grader he almost told to skip the tournament 44:13 - Cadet Worlds, Fargo, and how Jersey's freestyle and Greco scene died out 49:02 - Speed round: best wrestling shoe ever made 50:25 - What he's reading (nothing since his daughter finished 8th grade) 51:10 - The New Jersey Mount Rushmore 54:02 - Magic wand: "Stop complaining. Can I do something to help?" 📋 ABOUT THIS EPISODE Matt Ciampa has run Eclipse Wrestling Club in New Jersey for nearly three decades and coaches men's wrestling at East Stroudsburg University. He was New Jersey's Freestyle and Greco-Roman Coach of the Year in 2013. He's also the guy Mike defaults to whenever Greco comes up, and the guy who texted him after the Doug Schwab episode to say the two-hats thing was nonsense. What follows is a real disagreement between two coaches who have known each other since Fargo. Ciampa's position: he started coaching a high school team at 24, twenty years before his own son competed, and he built his whole approach on how his high school coach treated him. So there was never a second hat to put on. He'll concede one thing. The emotion is different when it's your own kid who's hurting. The behavior isn't. Along the way: why he can't watch a hand get raised without thinking about hip position, why the kid who loses and loves wrestling anyway is disappearing, why wrestling is drifting toward being a sport of affluence, and the 10th-grade heavyweight going 0-4 every weekend that he nearly pulled from the schedule. That kid was David Zabriskie, who went on to win the 2010 NCAA heavyweight title at Iowa State as a three-time All-American. Plus the New Jersey Mount Rushmore, including a Jordan Burroughs pick he'll only make on the grounds that the guy is undeniable. 🎙️ ABOUT ATHLETOR PODCAST The Athletor Podcast brings you conversations with the coaches, athletes, and minds shaping wrestling. Subscribe for new episodes weekly. 🔗 CONNECT YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXjsj-4x50ZVLOvSjaUEM9A Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/athletor.live/ X: https://x.com/athletor Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/athletor.live/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@athletor

Ep. 0185

Matt Ciampa: There's Only One Hat, And It's Not Dad Or Coach

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