Scott Swanson
Sweet Home Junior High and Mat Club wrestling coach Steve Schilling has been selected as 2011 Oregon Athletic Coaches Association Middle School Coach of the Year.
Schilling, who has coached at the junior high for six years will be recognized at a banquet on May 28.
Rob Younger, OACA associate director, said Schilling was selected from more than 150 coaches representing all the sports offered at middle schools in the state.
Steve Thorpe, wrestling coach at Sweet Home High School, said that Schilling’s dedication to the sport makes him stand out in the crowd.
Schilling started coaching with Thorpe at the Mat Club nearly 10 years ago and helped build the club up to its current strength of some 185 wrestlers.
He also has taken Oregon middle school wrestling teams to the national championships in Danville, Ill., for the last three years, two teams this year, both of which placed in the top eight out of 24 teams, which, Thorpe said, was “unheard of.”
Schilling is also a member of the Oregon Wrestling Association Cultural Exchange Board, is a supporter of the Oregon State University wrestling program and coached the Oregon team at the freestyle nationals last year in Fargo, N.D. He also helped organize the Oregon Makes a Difference tournament last November at OSU.
His older son, Colton, is a two-time OSAA 4A state champion as a high school sophomore.
He also has been an “integral part” of Sweet Home High School’s success on the wrestling mats in recent years, in which the Huskies have won two state championships and placed second in a five-year span.
“He has to be credited, along with other coaches in our program , with what we do,” Thorpe said. “It’s not just what I do. It’s all the people involved with it.
“One of the things that makes Steve a successful coach is he’s probably as unselfish a person as I’ve ever known in my life,” Thorpe said. “He’s unselfish with his time, he’s unselfish with what he knows, and he’s good for kids. He’s willing to tell a kid what they need to hear as well even if it’s not what they want to hear.”
Younger said Schilling’s success at the junior high and in the Mat Club and his contributions to the high school program were defining factors in his selection.
“We just felt he was very deserving,” he said. “We look at things beyond wins and losses – the character he develops in student athletes, the emphasis he puts on grades.”
Schilling said he was “humbled” by his selection.
“It’s pretty nice,” he said. “I’m not quite sure how that all came about. It’s kind of nice, actually.”