Despite suffering a concussion, Bobby Douglas escaped his first match of the 1965 NCAA Wrestling Championship with a victory over Daniel Divito of SIU-Carbondale.

Two days later, he woke up from a coma to find out Iowa State had beaten his Oklahoma State Cowboys by a half point for the national title.

“That was probably the most difficult thing that I had experienced in wrestling until that time,” Douglas said. “Had I been able to wrestle one more match, Oklahoma State would have won the national title.”

Douglas realized at that point that he needed to refocus on the reason he left his high school coach, who Douglas thought of as a father more than a coach, at West Liberty State College to transfer to Oklahoma State.

Born into wrestling

Growing up, Douglas discovered a passion that set no limitations or boundaries on who could participate, not even during a time when segregation could divide an entire nation.

He was no older than 5 when he learned about wrestling from his grandfather, who came from a wrestling tribe in Sudan called the Nuba.

While the coal miners would get together on their day off to play baseball, pitch horseshoes and roll bocce balls, the children from the Stop-32 coal mining town in eastern Ohio would gather on the grass after church on Sundays to wrestle.

“I was very small for my size,” Douglas said. “I was small for my age, so I was bullied a lot, and wrestling was my means of defending myself.”

Before long, Douglas began rising to the top of wrestling in the state of Ohio. As a student at Bridgeport High School, he emerged as the first black athlete to win an Ohio state high school wrestling championship in 1959 under the guidance of his coach and lifelong friend, George Kovalick.

“[Kovalick] was my baseball coach and my football coach, and my wrestling coach,” Douglas said. “We remained friends until he died, and I’m still very close to the family. I speak with his wife, who’s in her 80s. I speak with her on a regular basis. Still, she treats me like a part of the family, and I feel like a part of their family.”

Douglas would follow Kovalick after graduating high school to West Liberty State College in West Virginia, where he won a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics championship and finished second at NCAAs.

Inevitably, humbleness met reality.

Douglas realized his potential had no limits, but he would have to move on to a more prestigious wrestling program and leave Kovalick to get into a better position to reach his Olympic dream.

“I transferred because I wanted to make the Olympic team — it was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make,” Douglas said. “I had to leave my high school coach, who I truly thought of as a father more than a coach. But I wanted to make the Olympic team because I wanted to win a gold medal and I thought I could win a gold medal.”

The firsts in Douglas’s life were endless.

He became the first black wrestler from the United States to compete in the Olympics, finishing fourth in the featherweight class in the 1964 Tokyo Games.

In 1973, he became the first black head wrestling coach at a Division I college — UC Santa Barbara.

Fourteen years later, he became the first black athlete to get inducted into the U.S. National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

And in 1992, he became the first black head Olympic wrestling coach for the United States.

But those firsts never fulfilled his ultimate dream as a wrestler.

“… I could not win the gold medal, and that was a driving factor for me,” Douglas said.

A continuing legacy

After retiring as an athlete in 1970, Douglas’s wrestling legacy continued through coaching.

He took over as the head coach of the Arizona State wrestling team in 1974, eventually guiding the Sun Devils to their first national championship in 1988.

On first impression, it wasn’t unusual for wrestlers to feel intimidated by Douglas.

Douglas recruited Kevin Jackson, Iowa State’s current wrestling coach, out of high school, but Jackson decided to take a different route and went to LSU instead.

“I decided not to go [to Arizona State] because I thought he was too intimidating,” Jackson said last summer. “I thought, ‘I can’t wrestle for that guy; he’s scary.’ So I didn’t wrestle for Bobby. Probably wished I would’ve looking back on it. He was a great coach, and he was great at training you.”

Jackson would go on to make history of his own as an Olympic champion in 1992, but it was Douglas who brought to Jackson’s attention the significance of what he was about to accomplish.

“Bobby would continue to remind me of the history of wrestling,” said Jackson, who had Dave Schultz and Bobby Douglas guiding him throughout the 1992 Games. “Flying the colors for America, being the best in the world, and then he would also say, ‘You’re going to be the second.’ And I didn’t know what he was talking about. What’s he talking about the second?

“You’re going to be the second black Olympic champion America’s ever had.”

Kenny Monday was the first black Olympic wrestling champion from the United States, and Jackson became the second.

“Bobby would always bring up the history of wrestling,” Jackson said. “Bobby would always remind you these are the kinds of things your family can hang their hat on. This World Championship, this Olympic medal, your family will hang their hat on that. Your whole family, not just your mom and your dad, your whole family from cousin on down will hang their hat on this gold medal.”

In addition to cherishing history, Jackson also remembered the toughness Douglas displayed as a coach.

“He didn’t take no crap,” Jackson said. “If we were overseas and somebody would say something, he’d be ready to fight. If our head coach is ready to fight, we have to be ready to fight. He was always systematic in his communication to us. It was down right clear what our mission was. It was the best of times.

“What more could you ask for?”

As soon as Douglas starts talking about his coaching career at Iowa State, he begins rattling off names of former wrestlers he coached.

Cael Sanderson, Chris Bono, Derek Mountsier, Bart Horton.

Douglas pauses.

“I know I’ll leave some names out,” he says.

The list is endless. 

The wrestlers Douglas coached at Iowa State won 10 NCAA titles, earned All-America recognition 52 times and claimed 31 individual conference championships.

Throughout Iowa State history, Cyclone wrestlers have won 69 individual NCAA championships, have earned All-America recognition 294 times and have claimed 210 individual conference titles.

As a team, Iowa State wrestling has won eight NCAA titles and 15 conference championships.

“The history of Iowa State and its wrestling program is legendary,” Douglas said. “Starting back at the very genesis of the wrestling program, it’s always been very, very successful; very, very diverse; very inclusive.”

But the thing that meant most to Douglas as a coach, more so than the All-America honors, the individual NCAA titles and the individual conference championships, was the diploma.

“The thing I’m so proud of, they all graduated,” Douglas said. “That’s the real record. They all got their degrees, and Iowa State’s tough academically, […] and when I recruited, that was one of my greatest tools. You come with me to Iowa State, I’m going to see to it that you get your degree. […] We always put academics first.”

In 2006, Douglas stepped down from his position as head wrestling coach so his former wrestler, Cael Sanderson, could take over the program.

Athletic Director Jamie Pollard is quoted in a former Iowa State Daily article from April 2006 about the transition, saying, “[Douglas] knew that the greatest amateur wrestler in history was in his wrestling room, and he wanted to make sure that I shared his vision that we had to do whatever was possible to make sure that wrestler stayed in the Cyclone family.

“His desire to design a coaching transition was truly selfless. In a sport that is largely individual, Bobby [Douglas] wanted to make sure that the Cyclone team was poised for the future.”

A decline in popularity of wrestling, however, has left Douglas with a bleak outlook for the future of the sport. 

“Tell your history, show your history or you’ll be history,” Douglas said. “Unless we make some changes, we’re going to be history.”

As an athlete, Douglas went for gold. As a coach, his top priority was graduating his athletes. Now, he’s focused on saving the sport that helped guide his life.