UPJ’s Pecora all-time winningest coach
More than 2,000 fans braved a winter snowstorm to pack the Pitt-Johnstown Sports Center Friday night to witness legendary wrestling coach Pat Pecora make history.
Pecora’s No. 4-ranked Mountain Cats needed to defeat No. 11 Mercyhurst to make him the all-time winningest wrestling coach in NCAA history, regardless of division. With two matches left in the dual meet, the outcome was already decided. Pecora was alone at the top of the mountain — though you never would have guessed it if you were watching from the stands.
“Even whenever technically the match was already done and sealed, he wasn’t done coaching,” Pitt-Johnstown assistant coach Jody Strittmatter said. “He was coaching his heart out during that 197-pound and heavyweight match, because he wanted to help those individuals.
“He’s just such an amazing coach and he cares so much about each and every kid on the team.”
Once the 285-pound match was complete, it was finally official. With his 617th career dual meet win, Pecora had surpassed former Oregon State coach Dale Thomas as the winningest coach in NCAA history and cemented his place in the pantheon of wrestling’s alltime greatest coaches, right alongside names like Thomas, Dan Gable, John Smith and Cael Sanderson.
“That’s where it gets kind of mind-boggling,” Pecora said. “When you mention names like Gable and Sanderson and John Smith, of course all Olympic champions — I came from very humble beginnings
compared to these guys.”
Pecora grew up in the housing projects in Turtle Creek. In those days, kids didn’t start wrestling at 5 or 6 years old, like so many do now. There simply weren’t a plethora of youth programs available to kids like there are today. Pecora never even stepped foot on a wrestling mat until he got to Serra Catholic High School.
“My older brother Richie started wrestling,” Pecora said. “He took me to practice a couple of times, and I liked it. So when I got to Serra, the first thing I did was go out for the wrestling team.”
The sport came naturally to Pecora, who said the time he spent fighting on the street and wrestling around the house with his older brothers prepared him for life on the mat. He placed third in the state his senior year of high school in the separate postseason tournament held for Catholic schools, then went on to have a successful career at West Liberty State College, now West Liberty University.
Pecora credits his coach at West Liberty, Vince Monseau, for instilling the core values he has spent the past 44 years preaching to his wrestlers.
“Coach Monseau, I think, is kind of the first coach that — he affected my life,” Pecora said. “To this day, I have him as my mentor in terms of how to coach as a human being. I felt he cared.”
After graduating from West Liberty, Pecora decided to go into coaching right away. He found an opening at East Allegheny, where his uncle, Frank Cortazzo, was the football coach. Pecora only coached at the high school level for one year before he saw an ad in the paper looking for a new wrestling coach at Pitt-Johnstown.
“I put my resume in, and then one day, my brother Ernie said, ‘Hey, you got a call from UPJ. They want you to go up there for an interview,’” Pecora said. “I go, ‘Holy smokes, I don’t even have a car.’”
A couple of weeks later, Pecora got the job, and the rest is history — literally.
In 44 years as Pitt-Johnstown’s wrestling coach, the Mountain Cats have had 14 wrestlers win a combined 22 NCAA championships — including Carlton Haselrig, the only six-time NCAA wrestling champion. Pecora has coached 154 All-Americans, and his teams have won 22 NCAA regional championships, along with the 1996 and 1999 NCAA Division II national championships.
Pecora may not have had the most decorated career as a wrestler, but it’s going to be tough for any coach at any level to top the resume he has put together on the sidelines.
“I found it came naturally to me, just because it was something that I got from my family,” Pecora said. “I felt it was an easy transition. I didn’t even feel like it was transitioning. I felt like it was what I was meant to do. I always felt like it was a calling more than a profession. It was a calling to be coaching.
“I think that’s why I can do it for so long, because it isn’t a job — it’s a calling. It’s who I am.
Chris Eddins, a Greensburg Salem grad, is a 149pound senior at Pitt-Johnstown and two-time defending NCAA champion. A former WPIAL champion who came up just short of reaching the state finals as a senior in high school, Eddins is the type of local talent Pecora has built the Mountain Cats’ program around.
“Here, it’s a heritage,” Eddins said. “You’re not just wrestling for yourself. You’re wrestling for coach Pecora. You’re wrestling for history. You’re wrestling for all those guys that came before and made the legacy that is UPJ.
“You’ve got to represent your brotherhood. You’ve got to make them proud every time you step on that mat.”
Pecora knows as well as anybody that the amount of wrestling talent found in Western Pennsylvania is second to none. Pitt-Johnstown has 21 WPIAL wrestlers on its roster, and its entire lineup is made up of wrestlers from Pennsylvania and Ohio.
“If you want to be the toughest kid on the block, you’ve got to be the toughest guy on your street first,” Pecora said. “I always felt that we’d go after the guys who were close by and get the best of the best, and we’ve developed that group over the years.
“This group, it’s not rare. Almost our whole starting lineup is from the WPIAL.”
With the all-time wins record secured, there’s not much more for Pecora to accomplish in the sport. Of course, he’d love to hang a third national championship banner inside the Mountain Cats’ gym, but that’s not what keeps him going. He has always said he’ll remember the relationships he has made more than any of the wins or losses.
Plus, his wife, Tracy, isn’t exactly pushing him to call it a career.
“She knows that I would drive her crazy staying home,” Pecora said with a laugh. “I don’t hunt. I don’t fish. I don’t bowl. I don’t golf. I coach wrestling. That’s my thing. That’s my world. I wouldn’t know what I would be doing. Where am I going to spend my time?
“So I’ll continue to do this as long as I can, and if some of those other things start happening, OK. But right now, it’s not even a thought.”