Mesa coach reaches 250-career win milestone
David DiDomenico wasn’t upset like many coaches when the AIA briefly cancelled its high school winter sports season earlier this month because of the pandemic.
But the Mesa boys wrestling coach DiDomenico was happy the AIA overturned that decision, enabling him to achieve his 250th career win Saturday as Mesa beat Yuma Cibola in a road victory, 40-36.
His career-win total spans 30 years as a high school head coach at Tucson Amphitheater, Mesa Red Mountain, and the past six seasons at Mesa.
“The special part of 250 is all the people that have been a part of this — my athletes, fellow coaches, my wife’s support, and so many others that have helped us, not me — achieve that milestone,” DiDomenico said in a text message.
Mesa seniors Austin Gray and Collin Ensing won their respective 140- and
220-pound matches to seal the victory.
Ensing was down 12-2 to Cibola’s Jackson Dusek in the third period before reversing Dusek to his back and pinning him.
Ensing’s pin put Mesa ahead, 40-24, to seal Mesa’s team win.
“Cibola, quality team, well coached,” DiDomenico said. “It was a total team effort with great wins by seniors Austin Gray and Collin Ensing. Ensing’s upset sealed the win.”
DiDomenico, 53, is known in the state’s high school wrestling community for his boisterous personality, permanent smile and raspy yet endearing voice that carries across every room he enters.
He never expected to venture into coaching during the late 1980s while he was a student at University of Arizona.
DiDomenico claimed he reluctantly became a volunteer coach at Amphitheater Junior High School. Teaching kids made him never look back on the transition out of his early career job at City of Tucson Urban Planning.
“Never wanted to coach, was forced into it,” DiDomenico said. “Started as young coach with no clue but full of energy. Turned out helping kids was my destiny and I have loved all 33 years of it.”
The Providence, Rhode Island, native eventually got his teacher’s degree and began his head coaching career at Amphitheater from 1991 to 1993. After leaving that school, he was in several assistant coach roles at Arizona Boys Ranch from 1994 to 1995, Gilbert Highland from 1996 to 2000, and Mesa from 2000 to 2007.