Dolde stepping down as Falcon wrestling coach after 33 years
A coach who one time facetiously wondered if he would ever get his first win is retiring with a record number of them. After 42 years as a teacher at Connellsville High, including 33 as head wrestling coach, Tom Dolde is retiring and preparing to devote even more time to what has become – outside of his family – his second love, continuing his study of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Dolde is the area’s most recognized authority on that decisive Civil War battle, and the thought around here in some corners is that if you ask Tom a question about that engagement that he might not be able to answer, then don’t bother asking anybody else. If Tom can’t answer, then it’s just about certain sure nobody else can either.
The man who has been known for many years as “The Wily Cold Codger,” became Connellsville’s head wrestling coach in 1968. Wrestling was added to the athletic program the previous year, with Gary Barnette as the first coach. A year later, when Barnett returned to West Virginia, the late Stan McLaughlin, then Connellsville AD, asked Dolde to take over, and as the old saying goes, the rest is history.
Dolde first got involved in wrestling while a student at Slippery Rock, where he was playing football.
He recalled, “Duane Patterson, from Franklin, a football teammate of mine, led the organization of a wrestling program there and asked me to wrestle. I wrestled at 171 my junior year. Then, at Connellsville, when Barnett left, Stan asked if I would be coach. Stan started the wrestling program here because he felt it complemented the football program, and it still helps. Many of the skills you use in wrestling you can use in football and vice versa.”
At the time he became coach, Dolde laughed, “There were a few nights when I wondered why. It was a bit rough at first, we lost all our matches although there were a couple of close ones, and there were times when I wondered if we would ever get that first win.”
Then it happened on a cold, snowy night in the 1968-69 season, on a road trip to Derry. Ben Ansell, Terry McCandless, Gary Hall, Jake Hillen, Howard Chaney, Mike Horvath, and Randy Rose all scored victories to nip the Trojans, 27-25 – the school’s first ever varsity wrestling win.
CAHS finished that season 1-12, then they doubled to two and four wins, and finally the first winning year (8-5-1) in 1971-72. The following year the Falcons were 7-7, and since then they have run off 29 consecutive winning years, with 1984-85 the only one not in double figures (8-5-1).
As he leaves the program he made a byword in state wrestling, Dolde owns an all-time WPIAL winning record of 448 wins, plus 137 losses and six ties, with over one-fourth (33) of those losses coming in his first three seasons.
It was on January 4, 2000, that Dolde reached the pinnacle of coaching – his Falcons defeated West Greene 58-12 to make Dolde the first WPIAL wrestling coach ever with 400 team wins.
His log also includes in the team bracket WPIAL championships in 1992, 1994, 2000, and 2001, and 25 section championships in the last 27 years, the last nine in succession. Starting in 1976, the Falcons won 13 consecutive section titles (missing in 1989), missed again in 1993, and have won every year starting in 1994. The Falcons have not missed post-season team competition since the start of WPIAL team competition in 1976.
Dolde has also coached 34 PIAA place winners (7 champions, 5 seconds, 7 thirds), 22 WPIAL champions, and 140 section champions.
Dolde is quick to point out that, “I have had many good assistant coaches in that long run, my sons Tommy D. and Don, plus George Harvey, Don Lynn, Rich Galand, Ben Benzio, Steve Sisson, Dick Witt, the late Sully Gambone, John Schroyer, Don Ainsley, Jim Grimm, Bill Swank, Kevin Harrison, Mark Mitchell, Bob Topper, Frank Haines, Mike Kuhns, Mark King, Joe Ross, Mike Zavada, John Stepanic, Catty Martin. So many! And if I have missed anybody, blame it on a faulty memory.
“All of them wrestled for me and now they have, or have had, kids of their own in the program who know our system as they come up. Wrestling is a family sport. Wrestlers have brothers who follow them, and some have sons in wrestling, like Benzio and King. Really, it can be a family affair.”
Dolde is also quick to tell you, “There have been so many outstanding moments for me. The back-to-back WPIAL titles, the WPIAL champions and state contenders, and finishing second in the state in 1988-99. The individual champions, and the team champions who always had the feeling that we would come back next year and win again. Watching Tommy have the success he did was a thrill from both a coaching and paternal standpoint. We have had 18 wrestlers with over 100 wins, and John Richey with four WPIAL championships.
“There have been so many good, lasting friendships formed through wrestling, a lot of fun for coaches and wrestlers alike. Then there was the 1979 season, when Tommy was a freshman, we beat North Allegheny, 21-20, in the WPIAL semis, and they were at that time rated the number one team in the country. And the year McGuffey beat us by 25 points at Christmas time and I was told they had shirts printed ‘WPIAL champions.’ We wrestled them again in the WPIAL finals, and this time we reversed five of the individual losses we had previously and beat them.
“But I think the most satisfying point for me is seeing so many who have gone through our program go out and make something of themselves, become successful people. That is a very impressive memory.”
“The Codger” also remembers, “Going to the state competition and seeing some of our wrestlers win championships and others come up short. I can still see Kevin Saniga losing 1-0 and if he had won that bout, he would have had three state championships.”
So how has wrestling changed during his tenure?
Dolde observed, “Overall, the kids are stronger now, there are better conditioning programs which are still improving every day, wrestlers have been willing to do whatever they have to do to be winners, they train better, they eat better, and there are so many year-around camps and clinics available now. Techniques are still improving, there are videos for them to follow, everything in general is so much better and still getting better. The smallest boy in the school can go out and represent his school in wrestling, be a state champion.”
When he first started teaching, Dolde was in math, science, physical education, and for the last 12 years has taught health. Along with wrestling, Dolde has been a football assistant 42 years, mostly as defensive coach.
“I love to match strategies and I’ll miss that part of football coaching,” he smiled.
His future looks to be in strategy of another kind. He has taken the exams to be a guide at the Gettysburg Battlefield, and there is still a step or two left. He has been “fascinated with Gettysburg since I first went there when I was eight years old, and have loved researching the battle ever since.”
Tommy is also interested, and while Don reads some on the battle, his main interest is still coaching wrestling. And wife-mother Donna? Tom chuckled, “She is used to me being away as a coach, and now as an historian. But she does like Gettysburg.”
One point is for certain – with his knowledge of the battle and the strategy involved, if Gen. Robert E. Lee had had “The Wily Old Codger” on his staff those three days in July, 1863, he would have won that battle.