Northern coach Rudisill resigns

by Rod Frisco, Patriot-News

Posted on November 25, 2007

Clair Rudisill, one of the finest scholastic head wrestling coaches in midstate history, admits that stepping away from his post at Northern High School hurts.

Not just emotionally, but physically.

Rudisill, a 2004 inductee into the Pennsylvania Wrestling Coaches Association Hall of Fame and the 17th-winningest dual meet coach in state history, has vacated his coaching position at Northern for personal reasons.

One of those reasons: A serious ankle injury he suffered at a wrestling camp that he is still rehabilitating.

"I'm just now getting cleared to drive again," he said ruefully. "Right now, I'm closing some chapters, but I hope I'm not closing the book. I might be back coaching in a year, two years, or I might not be back at all."

Rudisill will literally be back on his feet soon, but without his lifetime passion, coaching at Northern, for the first time in 37 years, including the last 28 as head coach.

During that span, he took a strong foundation at Northern and turned it into a dual meet powerhouse, compiling a 383-118-5 record, including the 1997 District 3-AAA Team Championship.

Not bad for a guy whose time on the mat consisted almost entirely of one junior varsity season at York Catholic High School.

"They started the program at York Catholic my senior year, and they just had junior varsity that year," said Rudisill. "That was the extent of my wrestling in high school.

"But I went out to college at Defiance [Ohio], and they had pretty good wrestling," Rudisill said. "I just fell in love with the sport. I saw it had a lot of its character-building properties, that it was tough, and I really got into those aspects of the sport."

So Rudisill treated coaching as a science, learning everything he could about what it would take to coach the sport. And when the opportunity knocked in 1971, he was ready, more or less.

"Northern needed a middle school football and wrestling coach, and I was more than happy to take it," said Rudisill, who retired in 2006 from his job as an elementary physical education teacher at Dillsburg Elementary School.

"There was a tradition of success at Northern before I took over as the head coach, and that was because we had wrestlers and coaches and a community that was willing to put in the time," Rudisill said. "That never changed. I've had great kids and great coaches over the years."

The net result was not just overwhelming success in dual meets, which were often packed to the roof at Northern's snug, old gym, but solid individual success: 51 section champions, 14 District 3 champions, 16 PIAA medalists and one PIAA champion, heavyweight Tyler Rees in 2003.

"There were times we beat teams we had no business beating," said Rudisill, who created Northern's always-sharp eye for matchups to his assistants over the years. "That was a function of our kids and our coaches working so hard. When we had a staff meeting on a Sunday night, if we got out in six to eight hours, that was early."


ROD FRISCO: 255-8122 or rfrisco@patriot-news.com

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