By FRED KRONER
Even as he reached another milestone in his coaching career on Thursday, Mahomet-Seymour’s Rob Ledin was looking ahead.
The person who is the longest-tenured wrestling head coach in the history of the storied Bulldog program (which has 29 individual state champions and 13 top-three state finishes as a team) is not focused on more individual accolades.
Ledin has had his share of those already. He is in the Hall of Fame. He has led the Grand March. He now has 400 career dual-meet victories after M-S’ Thursday night come-from-behind triumph at Gibson City, 55-24.
His thoughts are on the future, not his own as much as on the Mahomet-Seymour program that he has coached for 14 years.
“We’re back now,” he said simply.
He is talking about the entire program, not just the high school or the junior high, but also the youth program which starts with children as young as kindergarten.
That feeder program had vanished for a time in Mahomet. Youngsters interested in the sport of wrestling had to go to another community to gain experience before junior high.
Former Bulldog wrestlers Andrew Brewer and Jared Ernst started the revival. They did it with Ledin’s blessing and also with a caution from the veteran coach.
An introduction to the sport is a good thing, but not so much the concept of pre-teens competing in major tournaments every weekend and traveling for hours to get to the competition.
“The idea,” Ledin said, “is instead of hard-core tournaments, practice a couple hours a week, have fun, play games.
“Make them like wrestling and want to keep doing it. We don‘t want them burned out by high school.”
The M-S program wouldn’t be breaking new ground with this approach.
“I’ve looked across the nation, and that’s the philosophy of a lot of coaches,” Ledin said. “Instead of being all about competition and winning, they don’t let kids compete until they are 9 or 10 years old.”
This year at the high school level, Ledin and his staff have 14 members in the freshmen class. That should be the target annually, he believes, and not an anomaly.
“With previous kids’ clubs, sometimes they were competing every weekend,” Ledin said. “Some kids might want to do that, but it was too much competition and there was attrition.
“Andrew and Jared re-grew it and did a nice job. They made sure kids were learning wrestling and getting athletic. They cut it down. They weren’t pushing whole lineups.”
If other area communities see the value in a reduction of both travel and competition, Ledin hopes there will be support for an idea he’d like to see implemented.
“We’re trying to develop a dual-meet schedule (for the youth club),” he said, “so it’s not all day on a Sunday.”
Nick Morphew, a former college wrestler and a former high school assistant under Ledin, is heading up the youth group this year and has about 60 participants.
“We’ve got things going pretty well now,” Ledin said.
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Ledin was raised on Chicago’s South Side and is a product of the city’s park district program.
He started as a second-grader at Marquette Park and two years later ended up at Vittum Park.
His adoptive dad, Don Ledin, was a former prep wrestler at Chicago Kelly.
“He introduced me to it,” Rob Ledin said, “but he didn’t push me. He let me experience it on my own.”
Rob Ledin developed a liking to the nature of the sport and the opportunities it afforded him to be aggressive.
“I enjoyed the individuality and the physical nature,” he said. “You couldn’t blame (the outcome) on anyone else.
“For me, it was a good way to fight legally and have an outlet. It was a way of life.”
His father provided support and encouragement, but made sure wrestling wasn’t a tune-vision focus.
“In the off-season (from school), we’d go to a tournament and then we’d go fishing,” Rob Ledin said. “I took in that philosophy.
“When we go to a (summer) tournament, I try to make sure there is a water park or amusement park nearby. That’s why I like going to Disney (for a series of duals each June). It gives a fun aspect.”
The low-key approach at a young age helped promote a lifetime interest in wrestling for Ledin.
As a 101-pound eighth-grader, Rob Ledin was the first placer for the Vittum Vikings in the Illinois Kids’ Wrestling Federation state tournament. He was sixth.
He went on to a high school career at St. Laurence, where he was a three-year varsity starter and two-time regional titlist before graduating in 1985.
Rob Ledin wrestled collegiately for legendary coach George Girardi at Illinois State University for two years before a shoulder injury signaled the end of his competitive career.
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Don Ledin was a high school teacher and coach. He had stints at Mendel, Simeon, Corliss, Kennedy and St. Laurence.
In his formative years, Rob Ledin was able to see first-hand the pitfalls of a career in education. As he enrolled in college, he was looking for a profession that could provide more financial security.
He started as a business major, then switched to recreation.
“I was in classes with people wanting to be teachers,” Rob Ledin said. “I thought if I would be an education major, I could coach in high schools.”
That concept wasn’t totally foreign.
“In high school, the rec leader at the park asked if I could show kids some wrestling moves,” Rob Ledin recalled. “I’d go to Vittum when I could and teach and coach.”
Next year for Ledin will mark a quarter of a century as a high school wrestling head coach. He was at Clinton for eight years and Morton for two before arriving at Mahomet-Seymour in the fall of 2006.
“There is an end game, eventually,” Ledin said.
He doesn’t yet envision retirement in his near future.
“I’m probably good for three to five more years, maybe eight years,” he said. “At some point, I will have to walk away.”
Before his tenure ends, Ledin will continue to earn more prominence in the sport.
He is on the verge of becoming M-S’ all-time dual-meet wins leader in wrestling. M-S graduate Rob Porter has the current mark with 252 wins.
Ledin’s total tally stands at 251.
At the state level, the IHSA’s list of the top 20 winningest wrestling coaches includes anyone with 449, or more, dual-meet wins. Ledin could be in that rare and exclusive group within three years.
Names on that list include some he knows well.
Harvard’s Tim Haak ranks fifth all-time with 636 career dual-meet wins. Ledin’s 100th career win came at Clinton against a Haak-coached Harvard team.
Joe Cliffe, who coached at Plano and Prairie Central, is 12th all-time with 511 career dual-meet wins. Ledin’s 200th career dual-meet win came at Olympia in 2009 against a Cliffe-coached Prairie Central squad.
The M-S coach has another reason for remembering that particular night.
“Jared Ernst and Andrew Brewer shaved ‘200’ in my chest hair,” Ledin said. “They had said they would do it, but I didn’t think they would.”
His 300th career win occurred in 2015 against Champaign Central in the M-S fieldhouse.
“That’s when I came to the realization I’ve been doing this quite a while,” Ledin said. “I’ve put in a lot of time, effort and energy.
“If you’d asked me after my 300th if I thought I would hit 400, I would have said, ‘I don’t know if I have it in me.’”
And now?
“I still have a deep passion for wrestling,” Ledin said. “It’s not a job. It’s something I love.”
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Wrestling coaches have one advantage over their counterparts in many other sports. They don’t need to make subjective decisions on the varsity lineup.
Squad members determine that by a series of wrestleoffs. M-S has six each season. The first is held in the preseason in front of an audience of spectators and officiated by certified IHSA referees.
Two other wrestleoffs take place before Christmas.
The demands of the sport involve more than making weight.
“It’s not an easy sport,” Ledin said. “We bring them in at 6:30, but not the morning of a meet or the morning after.
“We’re lifting, conditioning and getting in shape. Then, there’s a two-hour practice after school. I’m blessed with enough kids that believe in what we’re doing and that the program can be special.”
The coaching that happens at practice or during a meet is only a portion of the job.
“There’s so much behind the scenes,” said Ledin, who devoted time earlier this time to updating the wrestling web site and also ordering sponsor T-shirts. “I usually spend four hours on Sundays doing videos after tournaments.
“The technology helps, but you still have to watch the video. You’ve got to know what to do throughout the week (at practice) and that comes from video watching.
“I’m fortunate that my wife (Christa) has taken over the Pin Pals, training them.”
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The memories that stay near and dear to Ledin don’t involve wins on the scoreboard or accolades that resulted from wins on the scoreboard.
It starts, instead, with sportsmanship and ultimately concludes long after the athletes have last competed for the school.
“I want my kids to be the kids people in the Assembly Hall are rooting for,” Ledin said. “And then, seeing people go on and be a success in life and keep me in the loop is rewarding.
“The coolest thing, besides the thank-yous, is when Tyrone Byrd (former state champion at Clinton under Ledin) posted on Illinois Matmen about me.
“He wrote some very emotional words, that was validation about what I was doing. Those relationships are things that stick out.”
M-S concluded its regular season on Thursday and will take a nine-day break from competition before returning to action in a Class 2A regional that the Bulldogs will host on Saturday, Feb. 8.
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Career win No. 400 for Ledin was far from the runaway that the final score might indicate.
After eight matches on Thursday, GCMS led the Bulldogs, 24-21.
M-S went ahead to stay in the 182-pound match when Colton Crowley – the first of two consecutive freshmen in the lineup – recorded a pin in 2 minutes, 27 seconds.
Mateo Casillas followed at 195 pounds with a forfeit win. Daniel Renshaw (220 pounds) and Seth Buchanan (285 pounds) each collected pins. Buchanan’s points were the ones that meant M-S was guaranteed of ending the night with the team win.
Two bouts remained in the meet and M-S teammates Caden Hatton (106 pounds) and Payton Ragona (113 pounds) were each triumphant to create the final 31-point victory margin.
The Bulldogs’ season record is 22-1 and the team is ranked 22nd in Class 2A by The Illinois Best Weekly.
