Part II of Sunnyside wrestling coaching legends: Sanchez
February 8, 2013 by Jose Garcia, AZPreps365
(Sunnyside's wrestling program is shooting for an unprecedented 30th wrestling team state title this week. This week, aia365.com will post stories on the coaches who helped turn Sunnyside into the premier wrestling program in the state.)
Don Klostreich, the legendary wrestling coach who jumpstarted Sunnyside’s ascension to the state’s wrestling throne, left his program in good hands when he stepped down in 1989.
Klostreich knew Richard Sanchez way before he recommended Sanchez for the Sunnyside wrestling job. Klostreich always looked out for his wrestlers and, it turns out, those outside his program.
When Sanchez was a senior at Pueblo High, he suffered a concussion near the end of his regular season. When Klostreich learned Sanchez couldn’t participate in a regional meet because of the concussion, Klostreich, Sunnyside’s wrestling coach at the time, persuaded officials to postpone the region meet for one day — until Sanchez was cleared to compete.
Because of Klostreich’s request, Sanchez wound up qualifying for state, where he won a title.
“That’s when we started to build a bond,” Klostreich said about Sanchez.
Klostreich also kept Sanchez from leaving Arizona to teach and probably coach in New Mexico, where Sanchez was offered his first teaching job.
There was an opening at Sunnyside, and Klostreich reached out to Sanchez, who had already accepted a teaching position but opted to go to Sunnyside and join Klostreich’s staff.
“He (Sanchez) would always pick your brain,” Klostreich said. “Whether it was football or wrestling, he didn’t miss anything. We are still good friends to this day.”
With Sanchez at the helm, Sunnyside continued to dominate, winning five state team championships in his five seasons as the head coach.
Precious time
What binds coaches like Klostreich and Sanchez, and the Sunnyside leaders who eventually took over the wrestling program, was the amount of time they were willing to sacrifice to build and maintain a great program.
For training and competitions purposes, the whole year was mapped out for Sunnyside’s wrestlers.
“One of the biggest things I learned was how to get the most out kids,” Sanchez said. “Get some miles out of these kids, we used to say. The kids accomplished more than they could ever dream of.”
And it didn’t matter that the kids Sunnyside coaches trained weren’t living in an affluent neighborhood.
“It didn’t matter where you lived,” Sanchez said. “What you want is a winning attitude and what you believe in. That’s what it all comes down to.”
It helps that Sunnyside also had wrestling coaches who cared for their athletes on and off the mat.
Sanchez and Klostreich were known for their no-nonsense approach and armor-piercing glares when it was time to work, but they also had soft hearts.
Sanchez, like Klostreich, allowed some of his troubled wrestlers to live with him. It was a revolving door sometimes, Sanchez said.
“We spent so much time together,” Sanchez said. “They were almost like your kids, and when they hurt, you hurt. You feel their pain. What parent wouldn’t do anything to help their kid?”
Luckily for Sanchez, his wife, Anna, and son, Phillip, were, for the most part, very understanding of the time Sanchez spent away from home and with his wrestlers.
But Sanchez also realized that his commitment to his program wound up affecting his relationship with Phillip, a former star athlete at Sunnyside.
It was during a conversation with Phillip that Sanchez realized how much being away affected his family.
“I told him (Phillip) one day he could be a hell of a coach,” Sanchez said. “But he said, ‘No, dad. I want to spend time with my family and take vacations.’ I thought to myself, ‘That’s where I dropped the ball.’
“But I don’t regret it. I think with him being around me, I think he gained a greater appreciation for what coaching was all about after he played college ball and came back and helped me. He said one day, ‘Man, when I played here did all of these kids have all of these problems?”
Besides loving his family at home and at Sunnyside, Sanchez loves a challenge.
When he noticed that Sunnyside’s football program was struggling, he decided to help out the football team while continuing to coach wrestling. But when the football players started to request more of Sanchez’s time, he decided to focus on just football.
Sanchez was told that Sunnyside’s football program couldn’t win championships.
“I knew better,” he said.
Besides, Sanchez had already hand-picked Sunnyside’s next would-be wrestling coaching legend, Robert DeBerry, a former coach at a sister school who oozed dedication just as much as Sanchez and Klostreich did.
Sanchez wound up reaching a football title game four times, winning twice, in the 17 years he spent as that program’s leader. But when Sanchez, 55, started to spend more time on things such as fundraising instead of coaching and training his kids, he decided it was time to walk away from coaching.
“The most precious thing we are given is our time,” Sanchez said. “I tell people always, ‘You talk about sacrifice, and to me that’s giving of your time.”
Becoming an administrator seemed like the next best step to take for Sanchez and is currently his district’s athletic director in Tucson.
But Sanchez admits that he wants to get back into coaching, so don’t be surprised if one of Arizona’s coaching legends comes back to a field or mat near you.
“I miss being with the kids,” Sanchez said. “I don’t miss the fundraising. I miss helping them through their problems.”
(To view a photo of Sanchez when he was coaching Sunnyside's wrestling team, go here.)
