David IcenhowerNow in his 31st year as head coach at the College of New Jersey (TCNJ) just outside the state capital of Trenton, David Icenhower has earned more than 450 coaching victories. He has led the Lions to five NCAA Division III team titles, with a top-five finish in 18 of the past thirty seasons.
Just as impressive, Icenhower has coached 68 wrestlers to All-American status a total of 117 times. That puts the TCNJ coach in very elite company; only four other coaches in all divisions can claim to have coached over one hundred All-Americans.
Of all those All-Americans Icenhower coached, twenty were Division III individual champions. One of those champs -- Tom Martucci -- went on to win a Division I title at the 1981 NCAA's at 190 pounds … giving Icenhower the distinction of being one of only two men who have coached a wrestler to DI and DIII titles in the same year.
David Icenhower can claim other individual coaching honors as well. He is a two-time Division III Coach of the Year (1979 and 1987). He was the first DIII coach selected to be head coach of the East-West All-Star event in 1982 … then made history again in 1997 when asked to coach the All-Stars for a second time, becoming the first DIII coach to serve twice in that capacity. In 1999, he was inducted into the National Wrestling Coaches Association Division III Hall of Fame.
"Ice" shows no signs of slowing down just yet, either. As of this writing, the Lions are on a ten-match winning streak, with a regular-season record of 16-1, the one loss being to perennial powerhouse Wartburg. Among the highlights for the College of New Jersey season to date include first-place finishes at the Ithaca Invitational and the Budd Whitehall Duals at Lycoming College.
The education of a future college coach
David Icenhower grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia. Introduced to wrestling by his older brother, Joe, David took up the sport in junior high school, at Drexel Hill. "Things were different back then," says the College of New Jersey coach. "You didn't start wrestling at age five or six like so many of today's wrestlers do."
His mat career continued at Upper Darby High School under Coach Art McCall, who, according to Icenhower, "had a tremendous effect on my life and my love of the sport of wrestling."
"At my school, wrestling was king, and I was a wrestling nut."
That self-proclaimed "wrestling nut" was small, weighing in at only 95 pounds his junior year, competing in the lightest weight class. "I had the opportunity to go to prep school, Penn Charter in Philadelphia," says Icenhower. "That made all the difference in the world. I grew to 123, which opened the door for me to go to Lehigh."
Learning from legends at Lehigh
While at the university in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Icenhower's mat career was guided by a succession of two coaching legends. First was Gerry Leeman, a 1946 NCAA champ and 1948 Olympic silver medalist from Iowa State Teachers College (ISTC; now the University of Northern Iowa) whose teammates included future coaching greats Bill Koll (long-time ISTC and Penn State head coach) and Bob Siddens, who can include Dan Gable among the champs he coached at Waterloo West High in Iowa.
In Icenhower's senior year of college, Thad Turner took the helm. An All-American at Lehigh, Turner returned to his alma mater in 1970, where he guided the program to fourteen top ten finishes at the NCAA's, and coached six wrestlers to a total of nine collegiate titles.
"It was while at Lehigh that I started to think about coaching," according to Icenhower, who was the captain of the team his senior year. "Kind of a surprise for a marketing major in the business school, isn't it? … I enjoyed helping Coach Turner, and wanted to continue my involvement in the sport."
Icenhower's introduction to Coaching 101
After graduating from Lehigh, Icenhower got his first coaching opportunity from yet another mat legend turned successful coach, Ed Peery, a three-time NCAA champ in the 1950's for the University of Pittsburgh who was head coach at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. "I was in the Navy Reserve. I was asked by coach Peery to help coach at Navy Prep, a prep school they had at the time. I was there for my three-year service commitment."
"Once I completed that commitment, I decided to stay with coaching," continues Icenhower. "I got a grad assistant position at Trenton State, now the College of New Jersey. The next year, I became head coach while still as a grad assistant. It happens that, my first year, we beat our archrival Montclair State. The president of the college was in the stands to see it, and hired me for the head coaching job on a full-time basis."
Everything changes but the position
David Icenhower has remained at the same school as head coach for more than three decades. However, much has changed around him, and not just the school's name.
"The College of New Jersey has changed tremendously in the time I've been here," says Coach Icenhower. "Back in the seventies, it was more of a teachers college. Now it has become more academically diverse, with a wider range of academic programs. With that, it has also become more academically challenging as well, which makes it a lot more challenging in terms of recruiting wrestlers."
Now that he's 58 years old, David Icenhower isn't the "hands-on" coach that he once was, either. "We always have young assistants who 'crack heads' with the guys," as the veteran coach puts it. "We're also blessed with local high school coaches who work out with the kids … A number of these guys are veterans of our program, so they know my way of working. It all works out really well for us."
Recruitment drive
"When it comes to recruiting, we're going up against smaller Division I programs in the region such as Rider, George Mason, James Madison," Coach Icenhower continues. "It's pretty rare that we're seeking the same wrestlers as other DIII schools."
When asked to describe what he's looking for in recruits, Icenhower says, "We focus on the state of New Jersey. In fact, right now, all but one of our wrestlers is from New Jersey. (The one out-of-stater is from Georgia.) There's so much talent in this state. There's really no need to go looking out-of-state."
David IcenhowerMulti-sport athletes also catch the attention of Coach Icenhower. "It's always great to find a wrestler who has competed in other sports as well, for instance, a football player who wants to concentrate on wrestling in college … Having that multi-sport perspective is a real plus in so many ways. It indicates a level of flexibility and adaptability that goes beyond athleticism to the mental aspects as well … Sadly, the multi-sport athlete is becoming rarer and rarer, as more kids concentrate on a single sport."
In addition to his own coaching credentials and winning legacy at the College of New Jersey, David Icenhower can claim another recruiting advantage: "We get tremendous support from our alums. We have about fifty alums from our program who are now in coaching. It's like having a network out there, giving us advance notice of potential recruits. It really helps us with the recruiting process."
Experience provides perspective
David Icenhower has been head coach long enough that he is now coaching the sons of former wrestlers. Yet he is not one of those veteran coaches who longs for "the good old days." Ask him how today's wrestlers differ from those in the past, and the coach offers a candid assessment: "Today's kids are better. They got started earlier in the sport. They wrestle more matches. They go up against more diverse competition. Most of them are single-sport athletes, so they tend to be more focused."
"There are some drawbacks to all that," adds Icenhower. "Some guys have been at it so long and have been so focused, that burnout can be more of an issue than it once was."
When asked if there are generational differences between him and his wrestlers, he replies, "I'd like to think that being on a college campus helps keep me young." He quickly adds, "When you come right down to it, today's kids aren't that much different than previous generations."
Every day, David Icenhower, Sr., brings a wealth of experience to the wrestling room at the College of New Jersey. The Lions benefit from Coach Icenhower's unique blend of expertise gained by learning from past coaching legends such as Art McCall, Gerry Leeman, Thad Turner and Ed Peery … more than thirty years of real-world mat success at TCNJ … and an enduring enthusiasm for the sport and its athletes.
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