John Wooden was starstruck.

He was arguably the most famous coach in America, but at an event in Colorado Springs decades ago, he couldn’t help but be in awe of the coach across the table from him.  

“You’re the best coach of all the sports,” Wooden told the man.

Wooden was addressing Dan Gable, a legendary collegiate wrestler at Iowa State and now the coach at the University of Iowa, who would go on to win 15 National Championships.

“I’ve never forgotten that moment in my life,” Gable said. “That compliment opened my eyes a little bit because I wasn’t sure what people knew about the sports that didn’t make the top headlines every day in the United States.”

Gable is widely considered among the greatest wrestlers of all time — going 117-1 over his illustrious college career — while winning a Gold Medal at the 1972 Olympics.

He guided Iowa to nine consecutive NCAA championships as a coach and later was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The Daily Coach spoke to Gable recently about the keys to his unmatched consistency, why his lone collegiate defeat was the best thing to happen to his career, and his philosophies on cultivating talent.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Coach, thanks a lot for doing this. Tell us a little about your childhood in Waterloo and how it shaped you.

We didn’t have a lot. We lived modestly in some small homes, and my dad was trying to find his profession. My mom enrolled me at the YMCA when I was 4 to learn how to swim. I had probably been getting in a little too much trouble, a little ornery. So, the word from her was “I need help. This kid needs a little direction. We want him to learn some valuable things in life.”

Pretty soon, I was a member of a swim team. Then, I was not only swimming, but I was competing and practicing multiple sports: Basketball, (there was) a small wrestling room. I got my first job at 10 at the YMCA — 35 cents an hour. I was the guy cleaning the lockers, sweeping and mopping the floor, picking up the trash. That was my first paid job when I was 10 years old.

Obviously, wrestling became a critical part of your life, and you’ve said your high school coach had a significant impact on you. What did you learn from him?  

I was a punk kid in sophomore year. He was the guidance counselor besides the wrestling coach. He called me in one time and sat there and told me that he heard some rumors about me and a couple of wrestlers and there might be beer involved at a party. Then, all of a sudden, he started talking to me about his life and how he also needed direction. He must’ve seen something in me that he made me a team captain and a leader. I looked up to him.

(He said), “Win with humility. Lose with dignity. But damnit don’t lose.” You don’t make a stink. You want to take what’s dished out, but you also want to really learn from it. Everybody’s got to be held accountable.

The bottom line is I’m a perfectionist. I know you’re going to lose sometimes, somehow, but that’s not what you need to think about. I’m trying to figure out at all times how to be good enough and the steps you take where you come through.

You faced pretty unimaginable tragedy in high school with the passing of your sister. Did any part of you want to give up wrestling?

That wasn’t my name. Quitting wasn’t a part of me. Giving up wasn’t a part of me. It’s the way I was raised. However, I did need straightening out. I needed to get back on the right path. There was no quit, but there was, “O.K., I’m going in the wrong direction.”

I probably helped my parents with the tragedy of my sister. They had built me strong enough already. But they helped me when I needed some direction to stay on the path that I had my whole life.

You have a truly remarkable college career at Iowa State, going 117-1 in your matches. What do you think allowed you to be so consistent?

It comes down to having the right attitude and mental approach. You have to see it over and over again. But to really have the consistency, you have to know that you’re in control. I learned how to control the match and the situation where the outcome was going to be good, usually great.

You also have to have what’s called peaking. There are different forms of being good. When it’s tournament time, you’ve got to understand it’s peaking time. There is something within you that can make you a little closer to perfect. You’re never going to be perfect, but there’s nothing wrong with striving for it.

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You were undefeated until that final match. How did that loss impact you in the long term?

That defeat made me the person I am. What’s funny is the guy who beat me, Larry Owings, said, “I wish I wouldn’t have won that match.” He said, “I wanted to be a world and Olympic champion, and it slowed me down… I didn’t know how to handle all of the publicity or my family.”

That match also changed me not just for the next two years but for the next 27 years (as an Olympian and coach). It taught me I had to take more control of my team when I go to an event. I can’t just let them run free. They might stay out late, they might party, they might run into a newspaper guy who would bring up something I didn’t want him to bring up. You’ve got to keep them under lock and key a little bit.

You had a storied career at Iowa State, but decided to go to the University of Iowa to coach. Was any part of you conflicted about taking the job?

I was training for the Olympics at ISU, and I was already done as an athlete.

All of a sudden, Iowa was going to make a change in coaches. It was going to be Gary Kurdelmeier. He had been there as an assistant, and he wanted me to come be his head assistant. I didn’t want to worry about that until after the Olympics because Iowa State also had a National Championship coach.

Kurdelmeier actually sent a spy over to Ames. He came to practice and watched me and got to know me. Behind the scenes, he was reporting back to Kurdelmeier. (He) got to know my parents, my friends, and he got all of these people working for him to get me to go to the University of Iowa. I got a call basically saying take it or leave it. I said, “Can you give me a day at least?”

I went to my mom and dad, my friends, whoever I’d go to, and he already had them hooked. He did the job off the mat, and I called him back and told him I’d take it. I went to the Olympics, kicked some butt, made sure I did everything I needed to, and went to work at the University of Iowa.

What do you think came naturally to you as a coach early on and what was more of a challenge?

I was really good at talking to my audience inside the wrestling room. My audience was my athletes and my assistant coaches. I’d been doing that my whole life. From the YMCA early on, I learned to deal with a team and be a leader.

The challenge was talking outside of the wrestling room. I knew how to communicate in the room but not outside the room, especially people you wanted in the stands, like business people you needed to help support your program financially. I was lucky to have four years with the head coach at the University of Iowa who taught me some good abilities about talking to people and going to different places.

A lot of great athletes become coaches, but they’re not always successful. How did you connect as a coach with wrestlers who may not have been as motivated or as talented as you were?   

This goes back to my YMCA, to my junior high, to my high school, to (Iowa State Wrestling Coach) Dr. Harold Nichols.

My coaches looked at me and pretty much always made me the leader of the pack, even though I was one of the smaller guys. For some reason, I had these leadership skills through good parenting, good organizations, through drive that you learn, and people put me in those roles that make a difference for team success.

You’ve got to get to know them well enough where you know who can skip a bit of warmup. Then, when you think you know them well enough where they can maybe skip that warmup, and the guy goes and gets beat or something. There are gives and takes and life, and you don’t always know how it’s going to go, but you’ve got to do the best you can. There’s no perfect solution.  

You won 15 National Championships as a coach and have been around so many other great leaders. What are the hallmarks of the elite coaches in your eyes?

I think they really learn their people. Then, they learn what they need individually. Everybody has to know how to compete, especially the guys who are talented. The ones who aren’t as talented need to learn talent.

How do you learn to have talent? Well, if you want to learn a fireman’s carry in wrestling, you have to hit it over, and over, and over again. And you’re not going to hit it without hand control. If you don’t have control, you’re not going to accomplish anything.

I liked a practice room full of unbelievable kids with great attitudes and intensity. But I also wanted in that room examples of talent. They both fed off of each other. Some people say, “If you don’t have it, you just don’t have it.” But I don’t believe in that. I believe you can develop it over time, and it goes both ways.

One is learning the talent. The other is learning the attitude that is going to make the difference.  

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