Mike Mendoza coaching at the Pac-12 Championships (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)Mike Mendoza, who had been head wrestling coach at Boise State until the program was eliminated in April, has been hired to head up the newly revitalized program at Northeastern Junior College, the Journal-Advocate reported Thursday.
Mendoza brings big-time coaching experience to NJC, a two-year junior college in northeast Colorado, having coached at NCAA Division I programs at Boise State and Cal State Bakersfield.
Mendoza had been at Boise State less than a year before the school axed its intercollegiate wrestling program without warning at the end of the 2017 season. Prior to that, Mendoza had a long and successful career as a coach and wrestler at CSU-Bakersfield.
Mendoza took the helm of the Roadrunners' program in 2010-11 after spending eight years (2002-10) as the school's head assistant coach. Under Mendoza, the CSUB program went from a 3-7 record in his debut season to the top 25 of the USA Today/National Wrestling Coaches Association Division I Coaches Poll in 2015-16, the school's first ranking in 15 years.
During his six years as head coach at Cal State-Bakersfield, Mendoza guided a number of his wrestlers to championship performance. He tutored 17 qualifiers to the NCAA Championships and four individual Pac-12 champions.
That Roadrunner championship performance was also on display in the classroom. Mendoza's wrestlers finished three seasons ranked in the NWCA (National Wrestling Coaches Association) Division I All-Academic Top 30. Two of his wrestlers, Dalton Kelley in 2014 and Ian Nickell in 2016, were named Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
Additionally, 23 of his student-athletes garnered Pac-12 All-Academic accolades and nine were named NWCA All-Academic, and his teams recorded perfect single-year scores of 1,000 in each of the last two releases of the Academic Progress Rate.
Mendoza's long relationship with CSU-Bakersfield started long before he joined the school's coaching staff. He was a top-flight wrestler for the Roadrunners, qualifying for the NCAA Championships three times (1996, 1998-99). In addition, Mendoza served as team captain and was a member of the Pac-12 All-Academic Team in 1999.
Of interest to Northeastern Junior College athletes and their fans ... Mendoza is no stranger to wrestling in Colorado. Prior to returning to his alma mater as a coach, Mendoza worked as a graduate assistant at Adams State in Alamosa. He helped produce four Division II All-Americans and an individual national champion during his two seasons with the Grizzlies (1999-2002).
Mendoza is eager to lead Northeastern Junior College's revitalized wrestling program which returns to the mats for the first time since the 1980s.
"NJC Wrestling has a rich history of success that goes back and I am looking forward to being a part of its future and the rebuilding process," Mendoza told the Journal-Advocate. "There is an impressively strong alumni and community support along with a great administrative support, which was evident when the program was resurrected last year after a 37-year hiatus. That support system is important for building a successful program and was an attraction for me and I am thankful for the opportunity that I have to help these Plainsmen wrestlers achieve their academic and athletic goals in the future."
Northeastern Junior College had announced the resurrection of its varsity wrestling program in 2016 ... a program that had a once-proud history. As InterMat reported last year, NJC wrestlers won the first-ever Empire Conference Championship in 1954-56. A decade later, NJC earned its first NJCAA (National Junior College Athletic Association) national champion in wrestling in 1964, then claimed back-to-back national titles in 1966 and 1967 ... which remain the only national championships in the school's 70-plus year history. Back in the day, Northeastern was taking on programs at larger schools such as Colorado State University, Denver University, University of Northern Colorado, and the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Founded in 1941, Northeastern Junior College is located in Sterling, Colo. in the northeast portion of the state, near the Colorado-Nebraska border. It is the only two-year residential school in the state of Colorado. NJC's sports teams as the Plainsmen.
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