- Athletics
When you coach at the same school for 31 years, winning state championship upon state championship, when you continue to assist your sport for 15 years after that, despite now being 77 years old, it’s easy to forget that Gordon Connell wasn’t always the McCallie School wrestling coach.
“I remember being a middle schooler at Baylor and wrestling at Hixson,” said longtime local sports reporter John Hunt. “Gordon was Hixson’s coach. We were supposed to be pretty good and they wore our butts out. Gordon was a great wrestling coach long before he came to McCallie.”
But in 1980, Connell not only came to McCallie from a coaching gig at Middle Tennessee State, he never really left once he arrived. From first taking the Blue Tornado post in 1980, Connell won 13 total state titles, saw 67 wrestlers win individual crowns and defeated archrival Baylor in 16 straight duals.
No wonder that an hour prior to the start of the 45th McCallie Invitational Wrestling Tournament on Friday, December 12, the event was renamed the McCallie “Gordon Connell” Invitational Wrestling Tournament.
And then the current McCallie team honored Connell in the fashion he most would appreciate, the Blue Tornado rolling to a 320-176 win over runner-up Baylor, shattering the previous high point total in the event of 285 set by Pope (Georgia) High School in 2009.
“Hey, that wasn’t about me,” he said of the dominant victory under current coach Jake Yost. “We’ve got a good team. Very balanced, very good.”
So what led to the Connell Dynasty, if you will? What transpired to have Connell and McCallie first join forces 45 years ago?
“I needed a job,” he said with a gentle laugh. “Like 500 other schools across the country, Middle Tennessee was forced to drop wrestling over Title IX mandates. So all these college coaches are scrambling around looking for jobs, McCallie was looking for a coach and I wound up being interviewed.”
Connell will quickly tell you, “I wasn’t their first choice, but that guy turned them down. From my days at Hixson (before Middle Tennessee) I knew that wrestling meant something at McCallie. They wanted to have a good team. They cared about wrestling. That meant a lot to me.”
They cared so much that one year after Connell came to the Ridge in 1980, the McCallie Invitational began, bringing in elite teams from all across the region. And that’s never stopped. Even Baylor sometimes joins in the fun, though Connell cautions that two of the Red Raiders’ best missed this year’s event to compete in a national tournament.
Still, the current McCallie team is filled with kids who got their starts under Connell’s watchful, ultra-competitive eye. A few of those won individual titles this weekend. McCallie claimed individual championships at 132 (Jaxson Lane), 144 (Will Hamilton), 150 (Dylan Villers), 157 (Cainan Williams), and 215 (Cooper Gentle). Axel Ritchie was a runner-up at 126.
Of his continued work with the wrestling program, Connell said, “I’ve been coaching 55 years. I’ve slowed down a bit, but I can still whip the 106 pounders.”
Doug Hightshue, the 145-pound state champion in 1986, recalled how Connell could whip everyone in those days. “He just dominated us,” Hightshue said. “All of us. But he also knew how to build you up for the state meet. We wrestled right before that my senior year and he let me get a take-down against him. That gave me confidence and I went on to win the state.”
While his sons Adam and Lee wrestled for McCallie, his daughter Anna resisted the urge to get on the mat when girls began wrestling.
“Dad always said I had the most passion of his children,” said Anna, “And Steve Henry tried to get me to wrestle for him at Soddy Daisy, but I think there are some things that should stay with boys only.”
In one sentence, Connell will tell you, “Wrestling is my passion.”
In another, he’ll say of his desire for priorities, “If you walk in my house, you’d never know I’m a wrestling coach. There are no trophies there. When I’m home, I’m a husband and a father and a grandfather.”
Listen to him talk and the real passion in his life has been his wife of 53 years, the mother of their children, Jan.
“Jan had never seen a wrestling match before we were married,” Connell said. “The most important person in my life, whose unwavering support is unmatched by anyone I know is my best friend and wife, Jan Connell. ”She has encouraged, loved and prayed over countless McCallie wrestlers. She is my rock.”
For so many McCallie wrestlers over the past 45 years, Connell is their rock. And they came from all over the country, reaching out to him by texts and phone calls from all over the world to make sure he knew that.
“I was overwhelmed by all the messages,” said Connell on Monday. “I had no idea this many people knew or cared about this.”
Then, with typical Connell humor, he added, “I’m just glad they didn’t call the tournament the Gordon Connell Memorial.”
Click here for more photos from the Gordon Connell Wrestling Invitational Dedication and tournament.
- wrestling