Sports : Gable discusses wins & losses, life & death with Viking wrestlers

Dan Gable greets VS coach James Locke; the Iowa legend spoke to VS wrestlers in December.

Dan Gable told the Viking wrestlers about overcoming adversity, hard work and smart wrestling.

Although high school wrestling should be about wins and losses, says Dan Gable, sometimes it becomes a matter of dealing with life and death.

Speaking in December to a Vinton-Shellsburg wrestling team still dealing with the death of coach Steve Johnson, Gable said throughout Iowa, the wrestling community is dealing with a series of untimely tragedies. The four Western Dubuque teens who died in a pickup/ATV accident and the two young brothers who drowned in a pond were part of the Iowa wrestling family, Gable told the Vikings before practice on a Friday afternoon.

Gable told the wrestlers that as a young person, he too, had dealt with such a loss. He told them how his sister, Diane, was murdered in May of 1964, by one of Gable’s classmates – a young man who had previously threatened to kill her.

More than a half-century later, Gable told the Vikings how he still struggles with guilt.

“I wish I would have taken his threats seriously and said something to someone,” Gable said.

He was a 15-year-old sophomore when his sister died. Those who followed Gable’s fabled career have observed the impact her murder had on his life and his athletics.

That tragedy was one of the events that Gable said helped re-define his philosophy about adversity.

“With adversity you don’t really have a choice,” he said. “You have to take it on and become more determined.”

Gable told the Vikings how that he became so eager for early morning wrestling practice that his high school coach eventually gave him a key to the school for 6 a.m. workouts – a practice he acknowledged that modern school officials are not likely to follow.

Iowa wrestling fans are well-acquainted with Gable’s legendary success: He won all 64 of his high school matches and 3 state championships (he was not allowed to wrestle at the varsity level as a freshman) and all but his very last (118th) college match – the championship final vs. Larry Owings of Washington. He then went on to become an Olympic champion in 1972, despite the determination of the Soviet Union to find someone who could beat him. He then went on to become the University of Iowa head coach, leading that team to many national titles.

All that success, Gable told the Vikings, began with the basic lessons every student athlete must learn to succeed: Consistency. Hard work. Discipline. Life skills demonstrate on the mat, in practices, in the classroom and in their relationships with parents, friends and girlfriends.

When an injury left him sidelined for a few months, Gable said he used that time off to “learn to wrestle smarter.”

Speaking to a team which had lost the night before, 66-6, to Independence, Gable told the wrestlers that if they work hard every day as he did, they soon will see results of that hard work.

“You will find your motivation here,” he said.