A coach.
A friend.
A mentor.
A father.
A warrior.
A legend.
These are just some of the superlatives that have been used to describe Ohio State wrestling coach Russ Hellickson. For 20 years, he coached the wrestling team at OSU and on July 31, his retirement from OSU will become official.
Hellickson’s accomplishments during his career are unparalleled. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1970, he went on to wrestle in national and international competitions. His most storied achievement as an athlete is the silver medal he won at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. He was a two-time U.S. Olympic Team member, won 12 national Freestyle championships, one Greco-Roman championship and was the first wrestler to win three gold medals in the Pan-American Games.
In 1986, associate athletic director Bill Myles hired him as the wrestling coach at OSU. During his tenure, he would go on to produce seven NCAA National Champions and 32 All-Americans compiling a 251-135-6 record along the way. He was the Big Ten Coach of the Year twice and the 2002 National Wrestling Coaches Association Coach of the Year. The Buckeyes also finished in the top-five of the Big Ten conference nine times under his guidance.
Myles said Hellickson was hired as the best candidate among a pool of seven.
“He had a love of wrestling that you could just see … he’s very organized and articulate and he just was able to sell himself and wrestling,” Myles said.
Among his team members and colleagues, Myles said Hellickson is known as a man of principle and at times sacrificed his record and the team’s standing for the betterment of his wrestlers.
“He always had the kid in mind first – always cared about the athlete,” said Mitch Clark, a 1998 NCAA champion under Hellickson and a former assistant coach. “He put that above winning, above the perception of what people thought of him. That’s the way he treated everybody, not just his athletes.”
Two-time NCAA heavyweight champion, four-time All-American and current OSU assistant coach Tommy Rowlands grew up in Columbus and came to OSU based on Hellickson’s penchant for developing wrestlers in the upper weight classes. While he would go on to hold virtually every record in OSU wrestling history, Rowlands said he is more grateful for the experience he had with Hellickson.
“Coach Hellickson impacted my life more than any other person outside of my family,” Rowlands said. “He oftentimes said I could’ve accomplished my goals at a lot of other places, kind of downgrading his impact on me, but I don’t think I could have become the person I am today without him as my mentor through college.”
Clark echoed those sentiments.
“He’s been like a surrogate father,” he said. “We looked at him as a father (probably) as he looked at us as a son. When he said something, you knew to take it to the bank and (knew) he was giving you good advice.”
His passion and knowledge for wrestling directly translated into a unique rapport with his athletes. Myles said the work ethic he honed from being an Olympic athlete served him well as a coach, but he did have a weakness.
“Russ always took the blame himself,” Myles said. “It was never the assistant coaches, never the wrestler’s fault. It was (always) his fault and what he could do better.”
Still, as a coach, he knew what to say and when to say it. During his freshman year, Rowlands made it to the finals in the heavyweight division.
“Before I walked out for the NCAA finals my freshman year, which I ended up losing anyway, he just turned to me and shook my hand and said, ‘You deserve this’ … it meant a lot to me and was probably the most motivating thing someone’s (ever) said to me,” Rowlands said.
The few faults he did have were overshadowed by his extraordinary character.
Rowlands said Hellickson exemplifies honesty, accountability, responsibility and integrity and that he coached for the right reasons, saying that he wanted to help other people learn how to be successful.
“All the people that wrestled for him were touched in some way,” Myles said. “Once you became a wrestler for him, you were with him for life.”
As a student-athlete, Clark made some mistakes along the way, but he trusted everything Hellickson told him.
“He was always honest with you … when you messed up he’d give you a second chance, sometimes a third and fourth chance,” Clark said.
Hellickson’s integrity was evident after the gold medal match of the 1976 Olympic Games, where he was paired up against defending champion Ivan Yarygin of the Soviet Union. The Cold War was beginning and this was billed as an epic battle between the USA and the USSR. Even though Hellickson lost the match, he never held any animosity toward his opponent. In fact, Clark said in the years to follow Hellickson kept in touch with Yarygin, at times sending him money if he needed it and visiting him any time he went to Russia.
“Imagine that,” Clark said. “Most people who lost their gold medal match wouldn’t speak to the guy and would consider him a guy (to) hate. When he (Yarygin) died in a car accident about five years ago, Russ was deeply saddened. He respected everyone, even his opponents. He was just a gentle giant.”
Hellickson’s breadth of knowledge also enabled him to pursue interests off the mat. He published a statewide wrestling newspaper, hosted his own television and radio shows and was the wrestling play-by-play announcer at four Olympic Games and three Goodwill Games. He was also an adviser to the President’s Commission on Olympic Games and a delegate to the United States Olympic Committee Athlete Advisory Council from 1981 to 1984. In 1989, he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame followed by enshrinement into the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 1996.
After hosting his annual summer wrestling camp this year, Hellickson gave a speech to the young wrestlers attending his camp. While no stranger to motivational speaking, this speech was different. It would be his last as a coach. He arrived sharply dressed in a tuxedo and presented stories of his career and what it takes to be successful, not only in wrestling, but in life. He ended by reciting a poem he wrote entitled, “I Am Wrestling.”
His final words were, “Celebrate what I am, celebrate what I have been, celebrate what I represent and celebrate the many ways I have impacted your life. I will survive this test as I have survived others, I am forever etched into the very fiber of all mankind. The world needs me. Time is on my side. History guarantees me. I am wrestling. Do not weep for me. Good luck fellas.”
