It’s not often that people get to become history-makers multiple times in their lives, but wrestling legend Bobby Douglas, who passed away on Monday at the age of 83, did just that.
And he did it in a sport not many realize is plastered with a rich Black history.
In 1959, Douglas became the first Black state wrestling champion in Ohio and ended up becoming a 2x Ohio state champion out of Bridgeport HS.
He attended West Liberty State in West Virginia, where he went 72-2 and became a 1962 NAIA champion and 1963 NCAA runner-up. Then he transferred to Oklahoma State for the 1964-65 season, where he won the Big 8 Championships.
In 1964 at the Tokyo Games, Douglas joined Charles Tribble and Robert Pickens as the first Black wrestlers on the U.S. Olympic team. There, Douglas finished fourth in the featherweight division. Four years later in 1968, at the same Olympic games in Mexico City where Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their black-gloved fists, Douglas was named captain of the U.S. Olympic wrestling team.
But Douglas didn’t stop there.
He won a silver medal at the 1966 World Championships and a bronze in 1970, a year in which he was named the USA’s outstanding wrestler.
Wanting to mentor athletes in the sport he loved, he took up coaching in 1973 at Cal-Santa Barbara. Two years later, he took over the Arizona State program and built it into a national powerhouse during his almost two decades in Tempe.
In 1988, he led the Sun Devils to a national title, a feat once deemed highly improbable unless you were Iowa or Iowa St, programs that had captured all but 3 titles between 1968 and 1988.
That didn’t stop Douglas. He went on to amass a record of 229-95-6, was an 8x Pac-12 Coach of the Year and developed 59 All-American and three individual NCAA champions during his time at ASU.
In 1992, he left the desert for perennial powerhouse Iowa St., where he continued his and the program’s winning ways.
Under his leadership, the Cyclones finished in the top-6 seven times at the NCAA Championship, including three runner-up finishes (1996, 2000 and 2002).
Seven times ISU finished in the top-6 at the NCAA Championship, including the three runner-up finishes (1996, 2000, 2002).
But perhaps his biggest accomplishment at ISU was coaching legendary wrestler Cael Sanderson, who is considered the greatest collegiate wrestler in history. With Douglas, Sanderson won four NCAA titles and three Hodge Trophies and became the first and only undefeated four-year wrestler (159-0).
Douglas won two Big Eight/12 Coach of the Year Awards (1993, 2000), was the 2000 NWCA National Coach of the Year and the USA Wrestling Freestyle Coach of the Year in 2004 and ended his coaching career as the second-winningest wrestling coach in Iowa State history.
Yet his mark wasn’t solely made on the collegiate mat.
He was an assistant coach on six U.S. Olympic teams (1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1996, 2004) and was the head coach for the 1992 U.S. Olympic Team, where he made history again as the first Black head coach for the U.S. Olympic team, which he led to four gold medals and six total medals.
His incredible career, which includes being one of only four coaches in wrestling history to win over 400 career dual matches, earned him a plethora of accolades including the 1992 USA Wrestling Man of the Year and inductions into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, Glen Brand Wrestling Hall of Fame, NAIA Hall of Fame, West Liberty Hall of Fame, Arizona State Hall of Fame and Iowa State Athletics Hall of Fame.
Bobby Douglas was a trailblazer, a leader, a mentor and a true history maker in a sport more need to learn about.
RIP Coach Douglas.
