One-on-One with Will Short

Head coach Will Short has helped carry on a tradition of excellence on the wrestling mat at Simley High School (Minn.), a tradition started by father Jim Short, a coaching legend in Minnesota.

Will Short (Photo/Jeff Beshey, The Guillotine)

Will Short was a two-time state champion at Simley before going on to earn All-American honors at the University of Minnesota. He has amassed over 300 career dual meet victories as a head coach, and guided the Spartans to state championships in each of the past four seasons. Simley is currently ranked No. 1 in the state (Class AA) and No. 8 nationally in the InterMat Fab 50.

InterMat recently caught up with Short and talked to him about the Minnesota Christmas Tournament, The Clash, Lincoln McIlravy, son Jake, Apple Valley, team goals, and much more.

Your team is coming off a runner-up finish at the Minnesota Christmas Tournament. Overall, what did you think of your team's performance?

Short: I think it was good. I don't think it was great. I don't think it's the best we can perform. But I also saw signs of good things. I think we're getting close to where we want to be. Obviously, we're not where we need to be or where most of my kids' goals are set for the year. We had a lot of kids who did some things in the fall that were not wrestling related. We had seven starters who played football and were off the mat for three months. It's a little bit different situation over here because we have to get them back in wrestling shape, just like all other programs. They're not where they were in March of last year, but they're getting real close conditioning-wise. I think every week we make up ground.

What was the message to the team after the Minnesota Christmas Tournament?

Short: We saw a lot of positive things from a lot of kids. But we also see a lot of things that we need to work on. We need to keep going forward and continue to improve on a number of things that we're still doing wrong in matches. It wasn't completely negative, but obviously we've got things to work on.

Your lone champion at the Minnesota Christmas Tournament was Micah Barnes, who signed to wrestle at the Division I level for Old Dominion. How important is it to have senior leader like him on your team?

Short: Micah is a great influence on our kids. One thing that Micah has done that sets him apart from others is his dedication to the weight room. In that part he is a great leader for our team and a great role model.

How will Simley's Clash team compare to Simley's Christmas Tournament team? Will there be any changes to your lineup, either in the form of additions or weight class changes?

Short: Cody Hazelett, our starter at 195, is back. He just verbally committed to Northern Illinois University for a football scholarship. Obviously, that makes us a different team. I think Cody would have been a placewinner at the Christmas Tournament. He placed the year before, so it wouldn't be crazy for me to say he could have placed again. How high? I don't know ... maybe 5, 6, maybe 4, and maybe even 3. I don't know. I can't compare him because he hasn't wrestled those guys. But that will be a huge change. Juan Torres will be back in our lineup somewhere. Juan wrestled four matches. He's 4-0. He should help our team at The Clash.

Obviously, your father played a huge part in building Simley into a state and national power. Compare your coaching philosophy to your father's coaching philosophy. Are they similar?

Short: Yeah, we're similar. My dad and I have worked together for years. We found a way to work with each other. There aren't too many differences. We both have a goal and a dream to give our kids the best opportunity to be the best wrestlers they can be here at Simley and we work hard to do that.

How much has the sport changed or evolved from the time you were competing in high school in the late 1980s to now?

Short: The biggest thing that has changed is the amount of kids that wrestle full time. When I competed some guys would do some offseason wrestling, but almost all of us did something else. Now the kids are just full-time wrestlers. The best kids travel all over their country. They've wrestled 2,000 matches by the time they're in ninth grade. The level of commitment has gone way up. National tournament are all over the place. You used to just get one national tournament a year ... you would go to Fargo and that was it. Now you can get a national tournament pretty much anytime you want from April until the beginning of the high school season. There are many opportunities to put it on the line and train year-round. There are also a lot of club programs like PINnacale that bring the best wrestling techniques to everybody, which has improved the quality of wrestlers in a lot of programs. Good programs with very knowledgeable coaches tended to always have an advantage over other programs. Now I think any kid in any program who wants to seek out the best knowledge can find it and be a top wrestler in the country. I'll be honest with you, 20 years ago if you didn't have something in your system at your school, you were going to struggle to be a top wrestler. So I think those are the biggest differences in the sport of wrestling now compared to when I was wrestling.

You faced Lincoln McIlravy of Iowa in the Big Ten finals in a classic match that went into overtime. Steve Marianetti once told me that wrestling McIlravy was pure torture because he would take you to a place physically where you have probably never been. How would you describe what it was like wrestling McIlravy?

Short: Well, I wouldn't say it was pure torture for me. I thought it was fun because of the challenge that he brought to the mat, and the fact that you were in a war and were going to be in a battle for as long as it was going to take for somebody to win the match. I looked forward to that opportunity and I relished the competition of wrestling Lincoln. I just wished we had more matches.

Your son Jake is one of the nation's top juniors and will be one of the top recruits in the country next year. How much has he started looking at colleges and jumped into the recruiting process?

Jake Short (Photo/Jeff Beshey, The Guillotine)

Short: We have had some preliminary discussions and he's talked to a number of coaches. After Fargo when I think he was performing at his highest level he decided to take a break and focus completely on football. When he was playing football he didn't talk much about wrestling. He talked to a few people here and there, but nothing real major. Now he's focused back on wrestling, so we're starting to have more discussions on it. He's got a short list of schools that he's very interested in. We'll keep going from here. But right now he's trying to get back to where he was when he was at Fargo.

When you watch Jake wrestle, do you see any of yourself in him?

Short: No. I don't. Well, I see some things just because of the way I teach wrestling. We're very different in the things we do. Sometimes I see a little bit of me in some of the things he does ... actually my nephew Mack a lot of times looks like I did when I wrestled.

Simley is the No. 2 seed in its bracket at The Clash, with Brandon being the top seed. Will you do much scouting on Brandon? Or do you not look ahead at an event like The Clash?

Short: We've got a list of the teams that we think we're going to see all scouted out. We know their lineups. We know where we think we can win, where we think it's going to be very competitive, and where we're maybe a little overmatched. We go in with a plan for every dual meet at The Clash before we ever even put our team together ... where we're going to need an alternate, where we're going to need guys to win certain dual meets. It's tough because you don't know where you're going to end up. We've got some tough tests right off the bat with Rapid City, and then St. Michael if you go by at the Christmas Tournament they placed ahead of us in eight weights. So it's going to be an extremely competitive dual just in the semifinals with Simley and St. Michael, who I think is a vastly-improved program. Of course with Brandon, we know them pretty well. We wrestled them last year, so we have good knowledge of their program. Thanks to you guys at InterMat and Flowrestling it makes it a lot easier for us coaches. We do our homework and make sure we're trying to do what we can do for our kids to be in the best position to win.

Your program is at three major events with Apple Valley. How much do you pay attention to what is going on with the Apple Valley wrestling program?

Short: Well, other than just competing against them, we don't really pay attention. They do what they do and we do what we do. That's kind of how I look at it. We compete against them. That's it. A lot of people have a lot of negative things to say about them, or positive things, or believe in what they're doing or what they're not doing ... you know what, to be honest with you, I don't care. They'll put a guy on the mat, we're going to put a guy out on the mat, and we're going to try to beat the guy they put out on the mat. That's it.

You obviously face a brutal schedule in December and January with the Minnesota Christmas Tournament, The Clash, and Cheeshead. Do you try to peak for any of those events?

Short: Well, I think that's a challenge with our program compared maybe some of these other programs like Blair, St. Paris Graham, St. Ed's, and Apple Valley, where their kids are full-time wrestlers. They can certainly steer their program toward a December or January peaking moment. I can't do that. It's not conducive. I don't have the kids until November. We have Thanksgiving and Christmas in there where you've got to give the kids a couple days off. Don't kid yourself ... We're going to try to be the best team we can be when we get there. But do I think the team that we are in January is the team that we are in March? No. I don't. I think we're going to peak at the state tournament like we have the last few years. We have wrestled fantastic state tournaments the last two years. Our kids have looked really, really sharp at the end of the year. I think they will again this year. We have a good plan in place to get them there. But I think the Simley team that wrestles at the March state tournament would beat the Simley team that wrestles in January.

What are the goals for Simley's wrestling program this year?

Short: We wear shirts that say 'Quest for Five.' Winning our fifth state team title would be our No. 1 goal, but also possibly cracking the top five in the nation, which means we would have to get an upset somewhere at The Clash to do that. We also want to have five individual state champions, and that would set a record here at Simley. 'Quest for Five' is kind of our motto for the season and those are our goals.

This story also appears in the Dec. 30 issue of The Guillotine. The Guillotine has been covering amateur wrestling in Minnesota since 1971. Its mission is to report and promote amateur wrestling at all levels -- from youth and high school wrestling to college and international level wrestling. Subscribe to The Guillotine.

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