Manhattan Picks Gonzales as New Wrestling Coach! 5/17/2005 12:42:09 PM
Manhattan picks Gonzales as new wrestling coach
Dennis Toll Sports Writer
Manhattan High has a new wrestling coach.
The school's athletic administration announced Monday afternoon it had hired Bob Gonzales to replace Lee Woodford, who had resigned from coaching in late April after 19 years with the Indians.
Gonzales comes to Manhattan after being the head wrestling coach at Shawnee Heights for the last 19 years. Before that he was an assistant wrestling coach at Topeka West for seven years, and an seventh- and eighth-grade wrestling coach at Kenneth Harris Junior High in Garden City for two years prior to that.
"This is pretty exciting," said Gonzales, a Garden City native who is a 1977 graduate of Fort Hays State University.
Of his current position with the T-Birds, Gonzales said, "I am content at Shawnee Heights, but I just thought what position in the entire state of Kansas that I would like and what one program could I go in and work non-stop and use my high energy to maintain success, and that would be Manhattan. There isn't any other school that I would want to go to."
When he first came to Shawnee Heights in 1985, Gonzales said school officials gave him the names of eight boys who had been on the team the previous year.
"Three were ineligible and two had moved away," he said, "so that left me three to work with and we just built from there."
Since then, Gonzales has led the T-Birds to fifth place in the Class 5A state tournament on three occasions: in 1993, 1997 and 2004. Six times the T-Birds have finished in the top-10 at state, including a seventh-place finish in 1992 when the team was a Class 6A school.
Gonzales will be in Manhattan Thursday afternoon to meet with his new wrestling team and go over his expectations as a coach.
"I will urge them strongly to be at the conditioning program this summer and to be out for a fall sport," he said.
As to changes in the program, Gonzales said, "I would like eventually to make changes, but I believe I need to come in first and learn the system. The changes will come gradually."
One future change could possibly be in the area of scheduling. Gonzales said he likes big, two-day tournaments that give wrestlers a preview of state conditions and a maximum number of wrestling matches per season.
"We won't change the schedule the first year," he said. "I want to show our kids that we can get better and we need to wrestle a more aggressive tournament schedule. I would prefer to wrestle against as many different schools and different tournaments as our administration and our budget will let us compete in."
While at Topeka West and Shawnee Heights, Gonzales taught physical education and health. Since there are no openings in those areas for the next school year, Gonzales said he will be teaching in the oracle program at the MHS east campus, a special self-study computer lab to help students with their academics.
He has also been an assistant football and track coach at Shawnee Heights, but again, he said there were no openings in those sports at MHS for next year, so he would concentrate only on wrestling.
He will move to town this summer with Brenda, his wife of 32 years. He has three children, including Jennifer, who is 31, married, and living in Dallas; Heather, who is 29 and working in Kansas City; and Tyler, who is 18 and just graduated from Shawnee Heights.
Tyler was a state wrestling champion in 5A at 189 pounds in 2004. Last season, as a senior, Tyler was state runner-up at 189 pounds. He will attend Fort Hays State in the fall.
