Wrestling desire burns in Stottlemyer

The stout man leans against a wall with one hand on his hip, watching, twitching and staring at… The stout man leans against a wall with one hand on his hip, watching, twitching and staring at the flaring limbs. Deep in the dungeons of Pitt’s Fitzgerald Field House, wrestling practice is in full swing. Six-minute matches, mano a mano, full-effort Division I wrestlers going toe-to-toe in a permanently sweat-stenched room where there’s no such thing as turning the thermostat up too high. ‘Watch the hands, watch the hands!’ the man yells with the faintest hint of urgency at a practice match unfurling in front of him. The coach watches two wrestlers as they continue going at it, speechless. How he would love to lock arms with the wrestler to whom he’s now forced to merely coach, but even he admits that age and engaging in the sport for around four decades brings some aches and pains. It’s still not stopping Rande Stottlemyer from teaching the sport he loves, and it hasn’t for the past 30 years. But a part of him still misses wrestling. He continues to watch, not saying another word, but moving ever so slightly with the movement of the match. One arm folded, propping up the other as he puts his hand in front of his mouth. Just when the match looks to be on the brink of a decision, the buzzer blares for a much-needed water break, as evidenced by the sweat-stained shirts and sweatpants. As Stottlemyer paces around the gold-glowing room, bordered with the pictures of the conference and national champions as well as All-Americans he has coached, there must be an inkling on his mind. There must be the slight itch for the wrestling that he misses the most. ‘When you wrestle them (his student athletes), there’s a certain respect because you can do what they’re trying to get better at,’ said Stottlemyer. ‘I can watch it, I can see it, I can feel it in my own bones, but to go out and wrestle a six-minute match at a high pace, it ain’t happening.’ He wants to wrestle to teach. It is not so much that he wants to wrestle again just to fulfill his love of the sport. Teaching Pitt wrestlers is something that gives him the most satisfaction. Out of all people they will ever know, Stottlemyer knows exactly what his athletes are going through. ‘Rande’s a lot different than other coaches,’ said Mark Powell, a fifth-year senior transfer student from Purdue. ‘Because he’s been around the sport for so long, he knows when you need to rest, knows how hard to go, when to go hard, but he also knows when to ease back a little bit. He really optimizes your performance.’ A blue-collar worker, and a self-titled ‘country bumpkin,’ Stottlemyer has been a fixture at Pitt since before his entire roster of student athletes was even born. Stottlemyer grew up in Washington Lands, W. Va., and attended Hickory High School in nearby Hermitage, Pa. In high school, he was a two-time Junior National Freestyle wrestling champion and a PIAA state runner-up. Stottlemyer came to Pitt in the mid-1970s to pursue his wrestling career and to experience the city setting. ‘That was the ’70s, it was kind of a wacko time,’ said Stottlemyer. ‘I had never ridden a bus or done a lot of that cultural stuff before I came here. But wrestling was wrestling. You had to work hard at it to be good.’ He became a three-time NCAA All-American, put together a 68-16-2 record and served as team captain for each of his varsity seasons. Nobody told him to push himself. Back then, wrestlers could get away with not ‘doing the 365’ as he calls it, though most of the decent ones would do as much work in the summer as they could. ‘At that time the mindset was just starting where people were working out all year round,’ said Stottlemyer. ‘I didn’t do it like they do today.’ Today, Stottlemyer’s work ethic has evolved into a simple number that becomes his mantra for anyone wanting to be a successful Division I wrestler: 365. It’s his way of describing the number of days in the year he worked, he expects his wrestlers to work and the days he believes they must work in order to compete at a high level in this sport. ‘I like that Rande’s blue-collar, I don’t like flashy, I’d rather do, ‘Let’s just get it done,” said Jason Peters, one of Stottlemyer’s assistant coaches at Pitt. ‘I think Rande is the same way, which is good. That’s what Pittsburgh is all about. You don’t watch the Steelers because they’re soft. We’re trying to be tough.’ Stottlemyer’s blue-collar mentality took complete control of him after one particular loss in high school. It was his senior year and Stottlemyer was looking to cap off an outstanding high school career with a state championship. He made it to the finals and looked to be in good shape, until the unthinkable happened. ‘I was ahead by three points with like seven seconds to go. I was reversed and put on my back for four and I lost 8-7,’ said Stottlemyer. ‘There’s always one guy that loses a heartbreaker in the finals when they’re ahead and they had no business losing, and that was me.’ The loss provided the extra motivation he needed to push himself in the sport. ‘That summer, I went out and wrestled my butt off,’ said Stottlemyer. ‘I had a burning inside me. I knew I couldn’t finish like that.’ Looking back, Stottlemyer said it was one of the best things to ever happen to him. It propelled him through college and soon, almost too soon, afterward into a head coaching position. ‘I graduated [from Pitt], and I was an assistant coach for maybe 11 months,’ said Stottlemyer. ‘Next thing you know in ’78, at age 23, I was the head wrestling coach at the University of Pittsburgh. How crazy is that?’ To say he’s seen his fair share of Pittsburgh history since then would be an understatement. ‘The kids have made it what it is,’ said Stottlemyer. ‘Buildings change, professors change, things like that change, but the kids and the relationships you build with those guys, that’s the reason we do what we do.’ He glances off to spot Powell approaching him and greets him with a ‘Hey, what’s up?’ Powell asks for a stretch, Stottlemyer turns with a smirk on his face to say, ‘Give me a minute.’ He is 53, but nobody would know it if they saw his agility on his feet. As Powell lies on his stomach, Stottlemyer, with a glaring look of focus, steps, turns, twists and hops around him while working almost every limb of his body. He may have lost a step since his glory days, when he was an All-American. If he could do it, he would, but it won’t happen. ‘The fact that Rande doesn’t wrestle anymore doesn’t mean he can’t be a good coach,’ said Peters. ‘Everybody misses the wrestling. That’s why we stay in it.’ Staying in it is what Stottlemyer does best. For 30 years, in a world of change, he has been one of the most consistent aspects of Pitt. ‘He sure isn’t going to retire anytime soon,’ said Peters.