One book manages to capture the essence of both the Iowa mat program and coach Gable: the now-classic A Season on the Mat: Dan Gable and the Pursuit of Perfection. The book, originally published in hardcover in 1997, is available in an updated, tenth anniversary paperback edition from Simon & Schuster.
No writer is more uniquely qualified for the challenge than Nolan Zavoral. He once covered the University of Iowa wrestling team as a sportswriter for the Iowa City Press-Citizen ... then, years later, pretty much lived with the Hawkeyes for an entire season to write A Season on the Mat.
Zavoral has been writing for over a quarter-century. He came to Iowa City from Milwaukee, first working as an editor at ACT (the organization that, among other things, produces the ACT college entrance exam), then as a columnist and sports editor at the Press-Citizen.
"I covered a lot of Iowa wrestling for the paper," said Zavoral. "This was when Gable was head coach, and J Robinson was his assistant."
While changing planes, a book comes to mind
The idea for A Season on the Mat came to Nolan Zavoral at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, while still a writer for the Iowa City paper.
"I was traveling with the team to Oklahoma State," said the author. "We were on a layover at the St. Louis airport, and (Gable) was reading a story in the paper about a serial rapist. He had this look on his face. Even realizing what had happened to his sister, it was a powerful moment."
Nolan Zavoral"It gave me a reason to want to know more about him," according to Zavoral. With that observation in an airport waiting area, the sportswriter had his first thoughts about writing a book about Gable.
After all, as Zavoral put it, "Interest in Dan Gable goes well beyond Iowa. People around the world want to know about him as a coach, and a person."
However, the book would have to wait. Zavoral left the Iowa City Press-Citizen, first for USA Today, then, later, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Despite these career moves that took him away from the University of Iowa and the Hawkeye wrestling program, Zavoral held fast to the idea of authoring a book about Dan Gable and his wrestlers ... and kept in touch with the would-be book's subject.
"Each year, I'd call Gable and ask if this was his last season."
"Before the 1996-97 season, he said he was thinking 'this would be it.'"
Gable gives the go-ahead
Dan Gable (Photo/UNI Sports Information)"I wanted to be there for everything," said the author about his decision to spend the entire season with Gable and his wrestlers.
However, it was very much an act of faith. "I didn't have an editor, didn't have a book deal ... I haven't felt that strongly about too many things in my life."
From what Zavoral disclosed about his experience shadowing the Hawkeyes for an entire season, it seems he made the right choice.
"There were so many stories -- grades, girlfriends, wives -- that went beyond the wrestling. I wanted to weave in these elements along with the main story of the last season of a great coach at a great program. Then the story became even more interesting as Gable had hip surgery in the middle of the season. He missed a couple duals, but he came out on crutches, thumping around. Nothing could stop him from his appointed rounds."
An all-access pass
For his book, Nolan Zavoral also sought to incorporate the stories of the Hawkeye wrestlers, such as Lincoln McIlravy, who was battling painful headaches, and Jessie Whitmer, who exceeded everyone's expectations by winning the 118-pound title at the 1997 NCAAs.
All this was possible, thanks to Zavoral being granted total access to the inner workings of the program, including its coaches and wrestlers, for the entire season. The author sat in on team meetings, went to practice sessions, even traveled with the team to just about every wrestling event, from the first dual meet at Lake Okoboji in the far northern reaches of Iowa, to the NCAA Division I Championships at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, twin city to Dan Gable's hometown of Waterloo.
Rather than conduct one-on-one interviews, Zavoral used a more subtle approach to gathering material for A Season on the Mat -- by observing. "I think the best material comes from observations -- sit back and watch others, listen to conversations -- rather than from direct interviews. I wanted people to be themselves."
Going mano-a-mano with Gable
Even with Zavoral's observational approach, there were some tense moments between author and coach.
Larry Ownings gets his hand raised (Photo/AP)A quarter-century later, Gable still had a tape of the match. He hadn't watched it in years -- too painful. But, at a friend's suggestion, in 1997, he brought it from home to the wrestling office and slipped it into the VCR ...
This time, alone in the wrestling office, Gable watched grimly, pulling up a chair to just a couple feet of the screen. He saw himself score the first points of the match with a takedown. "Should have pinned him right there. But he was double-jointed in the shoulders or something. Always got away." He saw himself try an arm bar, and Owings slither out of it. "Got to get his arm back more." Gable sounded resigned ...
The tape ran out. Gable took it out and switched off the VCR. "Well, that's it," he said. He meant, "That's enough."
That wasn't the worst of it.
"There were times when Gable said, 'We don't want you around,'" according to Zavoral. "I was taking an unpaid leave from work, racking up $13,000 in expenses. That's the last thing I wanted to hear."
"I told him, 'The single-minded determination you want from your wrestlers, I'm putting into this book.'"
"We had a number of come-to-Jesus meetings during the season."
As the author explains it, "Gable wanted to read the finished book. I agreed to let him correct factual errors, but not other aspects."
"He was concerned about how his parents were portrayed. I said, 'It helps others see who you are, where you came from.'"
"From my work on the book, and as a writer for the Press-Citizen, Gable had seen me everywhere. In his estimation, however flawed the book may be in his point-of-view, I had paid my dues."
Gable the wrestler and coach
As A Season on the Mat makes clear, Dan Gable made a name for himself on the wrestling mat before becoming head coach of the Iowa Hawkeyes ... first, at Waterloo West High, where he was an undefeated, three-time Iowa state champ ... then, at Iowa State, where he compiled an incredible 118-1 record, with two NCAA Division I titles ... then, in 1972, winning the gold medal at the Munich Olympics without being scored upon.
Dan GableIn the 21 seasons Gable was at the helm of the Hawkeyes, his teams built a truly amazing 355-21-5 record, for a .940 winning percentage. His teams won 21 straight Big Ten titles, and 15 NCAA team championships. His wrestlers won 108 Big Ten individual titles, and a total of 43 individual NCAA titles.
With those impressive credentials, it's easy to see why so many young athletes aspired to wrestle for Gable and the Hawkeyes. According to Nolan Zavoral, wrestlers who chose the University of Iowa had a good idea of what to expect. "Iowa wrestlers knew Gable and his reputation for his hard-ass coaching and practice ways," said the author. "However, he wasn't tyrannical around his wrestlers."
In fact, coach Gable customized his approach for each wrestler, said Zavoral.
"Wrestling's such an individual sport. As much as anything, Gable realized that. For example, if a wrestler had a lab that interfered with the scheduled practice time, he would let them practice at a different time."
Having spent considerable time with Dan Gable first as a newspaper reporter, then during an entire wrestling season in writing the book, Nolan Zavoral gained a strong sense of the man beyond his public persona as one of the all-time great college coaches.
"Whatever line of work you're in, there's something to admire about Gable's level of determination ... Yet, he's very much a family guy. This is a guy who's in a very macho sport, but his life is full of women. (Dan and his wife Kathy have four daughters, no sons.) He has a notable respect for women."
"He's not an overt personality. Very low-key ... He can be a very introspective person. Despite his quietness, he could recruit and coach, and be front and center of a program that is the envy of anyone, in any sport."
"He was a coach ahead of his time ... He knew how to get through to a kid, to feel out people," Zavoral continued. "As an only child, I can say that he had that kind of empathy."
"He knew there would not be another coach quite like him -- single-minded, unswerving, passionate. He was smart enough not to expect others to have that same focus."
"Gable's a very complicated human being. It's not fair to try to reduce him to the notion of being merely a dominating wrestler/coach."
After a season with the Hawkeyes, time in the monastery
After spending the entire 1996-97 season with the Hawkeyes -- and armed with tons of notes, quotes and observations -- Nolan Zavoral had three months to put it all together into a book. As he put it in the interview for this profile, "I had three months to write 100,000 words."
How would Zavoral be able to get the book written with that kind of deadline pressure? By leading the life of a monk.
Zavoral spent three months at St. John's Abbey, a Benedictine monastery located in splendid isolation in the woods outside Collegeville, Minnesota, northwest of the Twin Cities. (He had been religion writer for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.)
"I lived in a cell, as they call the rooms where the monks reside," said the author. "It was very small, very sparse ... Every inch of the floor was covered in my notes, media guides, etc."
"They grew their own food. Someone would read aloud during dinner -- not religious material, but thoughtful books and articles."
"It was a great experience."
Nolan Zavoral described one not-so-great, heart-stopping incident during his time at St. John's: "I was writing the middle chapters of the book. I would send a chapter or two at a time to my editor at Simon & Schuster. To meet a deadline, I was trying to send a chapter at 3 a.m. during an electrical storm which knocked off the power. I yelled, 'Oh, (expletive)!' and all the lights suddenly came back on."
Writing in a monastery apparently provided the author the inspiration he needed. In A Season on the Mat: Dan Gable and the Pursuit of Perfection, Zavoral crafts a multi-dimensional portrait of Gable the coach and Gable the man, weaving in elements of his past -- along with what was going on in that final season -- in a seamless tapestry that takes the reader not only inside one of the great sports programs of all time, but also inside the heart and mind of one of its greatest wrestlers and coaches.
A Season on the Mat: Dan Gable and the Pursuit of Perfection by Nolan Zavoral, published by Simon & Schuster, is available for purchase online at Amazon.com. A tenth-anniversary edition produced in 2007 provides additional, updated information on Gable and the Iowa program, including insights into Jim Zalesky leaving the head coaching position which he had inherited after Gable's retirement, and the Republican party's efforts to draft Gable to run for Iowa governor.
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