Ex-Hawkeye champion Steiner now champions women's wrestling

CORALVILLE - Ten years ago this month, former University of Iowa NCAA wrestling champion Terry Steiner wondered if he was sabotaging his own coaching career.

After much hand-wringing, he left his job of six years as an assistant wrestling coach at Wisconsin to become the head coach of the U.S. national women's wrestling program.

“I had called USA Wrestling's Rich Bender, their executive director, and asked for a letter of recommendation if a college head coaching position opened up at the Division I level,” Steiner said Friday. “He said he'd give me the letter, then he threw me a curveball.”

Namely, would Steiner be interested in taking over USAW's relatively new women's program.

“I think you've got the wrong guy,” Steiner told Bender. “He said ‘Will you listen to me?' Reluctantly, I said ‘Yeah, I'll listen.' “

But Steiner's ears were mostly closed.

“I went home and told my wife ‘Listen to this.' She looked at me and said ‘Why wouldn't you look at it? It's your opportunity in wrestling.'

“I kind of walked out of the house thinking ‘You're no help.'

“If I ever wanted to get back into college wrestling, I was afraid I would get blackballed. College wrestling coaches - wrestling coaches in general - were not so keen on women in the sport of wrestling. I was afraid if I stepped to the women's side, I wouldn't have another opportunity to go back to the Division I level.”

So Steiner talked it over with his brother, fellow former Hawkeye wrestler Troy Steiner.

“I was looking for a way out. But again it was the same thing. He said if you come back (to college coaching) you're not getting hired by college coaches. You'll be hired by college administrators who want to know you can work with different sides of the coin.

“So I kind of left his place thinking the same thing: ‘You're no help, either.'

“But I asked myself some questions. Why do I coach? Why am I still in the sport? My answers to myself were that I believe in the sport of wrestling, I believe in the life skills you teach, I believe in what it's taught me and given me in my life. Why does it make a difference if it's males or females in front of you?”

Yet, it took another conversation with his wife, Jodi, to crystallize things for him.

“We were driving home one night about two weeks later and I was still trying to decide on the job. She said ‘I really hate how you're thinking. You are not opening your mind up to the possibilities and opportunity.'

“She said as a young girl in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, she was sitting in a high school gymnasium listening to people ridiculing, harassing, and booing. She said ‘What do you think I was watching?' I said ‘I don't know.' She said ‘I was watching a girls' basketball game.'

“She said this (women's wrestling) is the beginning of something, because in 2001 it was named an Olympic sport.

“And this probably got me more than anything: She said ‘You have a young daughter. What if your daughter wants to follow in your footprints, do you want her to have go through the ridicule and harassment that these (women wrestlers) are going through now?'

“At that point I think I decided this was the right thing to do because the one thing I was given as a child by my parents was opportunity if it was good for me. The thing I want to give my child is opportunity if it's good for her.”

Here we are this weekend at the U.S. Olympic Wrestling Trials. Steiner, who only gave Bender an original commitment through 2004, is finishing his 10th year as the national women's coach. He is two days from knowing which four women he will coach at the London Games. He isn't just a coach, but also perhaps women wrestlers' leading advocate.

“The athletes really grabbed me,” Steiner said. “They grabbed me and made me realize what I was doing is worthwhile. They just want a leader, someone to stand up for them, to just treat them like athletes.

“Coaching is coaching, educating is educating, motivating is motivating.”

Clarissa Chun, a gold-medalist at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, will vie Sunday for another Olympic roster spot. She is 30, and has been on the U.S. team almost the entire team Steiner has been its coach.

“He's great, very technical,” Chun said. “I feel like we're fortunate to have him as our coach. He's a great person with a good heart. He's just world-class.”

Chun has wrestled all over the world. But when she competes Sunday, it will be the largest crowd she and her fellow female competitors have ever performed before.

“I think we have a very great opportunity this weekend to move this sport forward in this country,” said Steiner. “The thing I reminded them is this: Naysayers out there aren't looking for a reason to support you. They're looking for the one reason not to. It's not fair, and it's not right, but that's the reality of it. You're in a male-dominated sport.

“So let's make sure we're giving good representation, not just on the mat. I'm very confident these girls will do that.”