Local wrestling star Quentin Wright returns to the mat as a Mountain League head coach
Bald Eagle Area and Penn State wrestling legend Quentin Wright will begin his high school coaching career close to home as he was hired as the Tyrone head wrestling coach earlier this month.
The decision to take the position — which will be Wright’s first as a full-time high school coaching job — came down to the connection he feels to the community.
“The community support, the tradition that Tyrone wrestling has (is appealing),” Wright told the Centre Daily Times Wednesday night. “I live in Tyrone and I have two boys that are coming up through. It’s kind of a natural fit.”
The former Nittany Lion and Eagle — a four-time All-American and two-time national champion in college and a two-time state champion in high school — will coach against his former school and many others that he’s familiar with in his first run as a head coach.
The allure of eventually coaching his sons, who are only eight years old and 19 months old, played a role in joining the coaching ranks, but Wright knows that’s a long way down the road.
He’s focused on molding the wrestlers he’ll inherit at Tyrone into good people and good wrestlers — and he’s leaning on his experiences in Centre County to learn on the job at Tyrone.
“Your community is your family and your family is your community that you’re in,” Wright said. “That’s what we developed, first at Bald Eagle Area. We moved there back when I was in eighth grade and they adopted us in as part of their family. They have a strong coaching tradition. I grew up in that environment. Then I went on to Penn State and they’ve always had a great tradition of wrestling, but the tradition was the coach and the staff.”
Wright wants to be the coach that reignites that tradition at Tyrone, and he has a chance to do so against plenty of people he knows well. Returning to the Mountain League means that he will be seeing plenty of familiar singlets for his team to take on as well as plenty of familiar faces coaching against him.
He’s excited for that opportunity and expects to have plenty of fun when he sees those people across the mat from him.
“It’s gonna be fun,” he said. “It’s gonna be a chance to make Tyrone one of the powerhouses in the area. I know the area, I know the coaches. A lot of those coaches are people that I’ve wrestled with and look up to. I have a respect for them.”
Wright knows that — while he expects to have fun in those situations — there will be plenty of learning on the job. He doesn’t know how good of a coach he’ll be, but he knows he’s ready to put his all into coaching. He’s not a completely inexperienced coach — he’s already done some coaching as the 4M Wrestling Club in Morrisdale — but imparting his wisdom and prolific experience onto teenagers can be a tall task.
He is well aware of that fact, but is ready to take that challenge head on at Tyrone.
“It’s gonna be a learning process,” he said. “The only way to find out is to jump in there and see if I can do it. ... As I learned how to do, my goal is to teach these kids to look within themselves and to learn that they are greater than who they think they are.”
There are plenty of outcomes of how this ends for Wright. He may spend decades as a decorated high school coach or he may chase even bigger fish and try to work his way into the college ranks as a coach — both will likely be options if he finds the success he aspires to achieve.
That success, of course, is a high standard — even for a wrestling-rich area like central Pennsylvania.
The former state champion wants his athletes to reach the same heights he found in high school and wants his entire team to climb to the pinnacle of the sport in the state.
“As an individual, winning individual state titles is the ultimate goal,” he said. “As a team, winning that dual team title in Pennsylvania is no easy task. It’s tough. But that will be the ultimate goal of what we aspire to do.”
This story was originally published May 13, 2021 at 2:38 PM.
