When Ohio State wrestling coach Russ Hellickson arrives in Champaign, Ill. for tonight’s dual meet against the Fighting Illini, it will be a normal match – except it will be the 500th dual match of his coaching career.

“Five hundred matches – it’s not a concept to me. It just means that I guess I’ve been around for a long time,” he said.

Hellickson has been at OSU guiding the team to a 258-142-6 record in his 18 years. In 22 years, Hellickson has an overall coaching record of 329-164-6. He has also accumulated numerous honors. He was named Big Ten Coach of the Year in 1991, when he led the Buckeyes to a sixth-place finish. He also was chosen as Big Ten Co-Coach of the Year and NWCA National Coach of the Year in 2002. He, however, does not use the honors to define himself.

“You can’t measure yourself by awards and trophies,” he said. “When you start thinking you’re a big shot, you’ve lost all concept of what life is all about. No one else measures you that way. They measure you about how you treat them, how you interact with them.”

As a result, Hellickson doesn’t measure his team by wins and losses.

“We tend in our society to measure everything by winning, and it’s scary sometimes,” Hellickson said. “I don’t as a coach. I look at it as you want to win a lot more than you lose, but there’s a lot of good things that can happen sometimes when you lose. A lot of growth and a lot of maturation takes place when that happens.”

Hellickson uses wrestling to teach his wrestlers about life in general.

“Wrestling bares the soul,” he said. “For an individual who will apply themselves in the sport of wrestling, they will find out who they are very quickly. You don’t fool yourself. You figure out what you’re all about.”

Senior Buckeye John Clark echoed his comments.

“He teaches you about life lessons,” Clark said. “He teaches you how to be a man and how to live a good, clean life in college. He’s developing you as a wrestler and as a complete person.”

The wrestlers and assistants were quick to lavish praise on Hellickson.

“I think he’s had a positive effect on everybody that has ever gone through the program,” assistant coach and former Buckeye wrestler Ken Ramsey said.

Senior Blake Kaplan tells an interesting story about how much respect Hellickson commands on a national scale.

“He is definitely one of the most respected coaches in the nation as a person,” Kaplan said. “I’ve had other coaches come up to me and say that if they had to take someone to father their son besides them, they would pick Russ.”

Kaplan said he views Hellickson as a role model.

“I have been blessed to have him as a coach,” Kaplan said. “It’s hard for me to describe how much I look up to him. He’s just that type of person to me.”

While on the surface, wrestling may be about wins and losses, Hellickson views the competition itself as the most important aspect of the sport.

“Competition is the essence of life,” he said. “That’s the way I’ve looked at it. I’ve never made my opponents my enemies. I think if we do the best that we can do, we make each other better.”

Hellickson came to OSU after four years as a head coach and 12 years as an assistant at his alma mater Wisconsin. Although he enjoyed his time there, Hellickson was ready for the move.

“I wanted to get involved in a program where I had the opportunity to excel,” he said. “Coming to Ohio was a good change for me. This has been a great city and a great university.”

Hellickson was chosen to be an Olympic wrestler twice, winning a silver medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. He was the captain of the 1980 squad that boycotted the Moscow Olympics.

He looks back upon the Olympic experience as a very rich one.

“It was a truly eye-opening and life-changing experience for me,” he said. “I found out the rest of the world is just like me. There are no demons out there.”

Hellickson continues to participate in the Olympic Games as a wrestling commentator – a job he has had since 1984. He will be going to the 2004 Games in Athens with NBC.

“I love to be in that environment,” he said. “You’re amongst the most driven and motivated human beings on the planet, and for most of them, there is a purity about what they are doing. They are doing it because they just innately want to excel.”

Wrestling is more than just a sport in Hellickson’s life.

“There are a lot of things about wrestling that are very meaningful to me,” he said.