Knutson steps down as wrestling coach

Hungry Horse News

Wes Knutson, the celebrated coach of the Columbia Falls High School wrestling team, announced his resignation at the beginning of the month, ending a 22-year wrestling coaching career that included the 1990 state championship and three divisional titles.

Knutson, who has taught and coached at Columbia Falls for 18 years, also doubles as the girl's track coach, a position he plans on keeping. But for the 45-year-old health and physical education teacher, coaching two sports had just gotten to be too much, with an average of 40 extra hours of work a week dedicated to wrestling.

"Very few people understand how much time it takes," he said. "I've never had a complete Thanksgiving or Christmas break yet in my 22 years, so that will give me some more personal time with my family."

Knutson is an experienced wrestler himself, a former Polson High School state champion and collegiate wrestler for North Idaho College and the University of Montana. He said that he tries to pass on to his teams the same traits he picked up while in school.

"The commitment and dedication and the work ethic, those are some things you learn at the college level," he said. "Obviously it's not an easy sport."

He took over the downtrodden Wildcat program in 1988 after teaching and coaching at Valier for four years, where he coached wrestling, boys and girls track and the football team for two seasons.

He brought that expertise to Columbia Falls, producing the state champion wrestling team within his first three years on the job. His teams collected divisional titles in 1990, 1997 and 2000, while finishing runner up in 1988, 1991, 1992 and 1993. Overall, his teams placed in the top three at divisionals 13 times.

In the state tournament, he guided the Cats to two second-place finishes, in 1994 and 1997, and third-place spots in 1991, 2000 and 2003. Under his tutelage, the Wildcats had 12 individual state champions and 49 divisional champs.

In his last regular season match, he picked up his 200th career victory, a win that came against rival school Whitefish.

Knutson said he didn't even realize it was a significant win.

"It's just another wrestling match for me," he said. "I wouldn't have even known it was going to be my 200th."

School athletic director John Thompson said the loss will be felt due to Knutson's dedication, knowledge and the hard hours he put in teaching the student athletes how to grapple, pin and counter.

"Wes was here for a long time, 18 years as a head coach," he said. "He had profound effects on our program. He turned it into one of the premier Class A programs in the state."

Thompson added that Knutson's ability to teach helped his coaching immensely.

"He's a great teacher," he said. "He teaches well and he coaches well. He had the ability to work with a wide variety of kids."

At this time, no candidates have been named to take over the program, but Thompson knows that Knutson will be difficult to replace.

"I think coach Knutson and his coaching staff do a really good job making sure those kids are wrestling at the best of their ability at the end of the year," he said. "Hopefully we can continue to see a very strong program and carry on the tradition of Wildcat wrestling."

Knutson said that of all his accomplishments, helping those young men blossom as people has been the most rewarding.

"Personally for me, it's watching a young man transform from the beginning of the season to the end of the season," he said. "It's watching them change and grow personally. And the wrestling was a lot of fun too."

He acknowledged that he wouldn't have been able to last as a coach without the help of his family and the community, and said that he will look back on the experience with pride.

"I'm extremely proud of what we've done here," he said. "I use the word 'we' because we've had some great assistant coaches. With those things, it makes a person pretty proud over the years. I would like to thank the community for the super support. The last two years I've had awesome parental support. I could have never coached this long without my family's support, those are some things that helped with the longevity."