Page Eight THE MICHIGAN DAILY Thursday, February 26, 1970 Page Eight THE MICHIGAN DAILY Thursday, February 26, 1970 Sales Service Rentals FOR FAST, ECONOMICAL TYPEWRITER SERVICE BY EXPERTS, CALL A&D BUSINESS MACHINES, Inc. 3022 Packard * Ann Arbor, Michigan Telephone: 313 971-5700 11 After 45 years, the Keen era ends filing for S G C spring elections is now open in room 1546 Student Activities Building 1 763-3241 U W". By PAT ATKINS Executive Sports Editor WHEN FORMER Michigan wrestlers come back to the U-M campus, one of the first questions they ask assistant wres- tling coach Rick Bay is, "How's coach's driving?" "I tell them," Bay says, "that it's about the same. It's four hours to Columbus and then three hours to the Ohio State Union. That's where we usually get lost-in town. His retort is that he always gets us back alive." In his 45 year span as head coach of wrestling at Michigan, Coach Cliff Keen has brought back many wrestlers. A few weeks from now, he will sit on the sidelines of his last Big Ten wrestling tournament, held here this year in his honor, and he will analyze each individual match as carefully as he has weighed each bout for the past 45 years .Now and again Coach Keen will stand to yell a few words or pace in front of the bench row of folding chairs, and then edge stiff-backed down into an- other seat. It will be a long way in miles and minutes, in accolades, in acquaintances, from a gym in Oklahoma where he began wrestling to the one here in Michigan. There has Peen one great consistency, though-Coach Cliff Keen. Forty-five years ago he told'a Daily reporter, "Amateur wres- tling has been recognized in the last few years as one of the leading sports and is gaining prominence in all of the colleges and uhiversities. It is growing by leaps and bounds and is destined to take its place as one of the most popular indoor sports." He could have said, and probably did say, the same thing yesterday. Another indoor sport, basketball, first set him on his wres- tling career-. "I was shooting baskets-it was in my freshman year," Keen recalls. "A little guy on the wrestling team was practicing, and he wanted someone to work out with. I had never wrestled before, but I was big and strong. Heck I could murder that little guy." It didn't go quite as he had expected. "Much to my con- sternation, I found he could handle me with ease," Keen says. Curiosity got the better of him and Keen soon had the matman showing him a few holds. Ed Galleger, the Abner Doubleday of amateur wrestling, was the coach of the Oklahonia A&M team, and after hearing a few of the coach's words at practice, Keen was out for the team. That was some fifty years ago. If it hadn't been for World War II, those fifty years of devo- tion to amateur wrestling would have been cut in half. Keen acquired his law degree from Michigan in 1933. He got out right in the depths of the depression, expecting to practice law one or two years and also coach. He practiced law for nine more years, coaching in the afternoon and trying cases in the morning. "Just when I was definitely, absolutely, positively, going into law full time, the war came on and I volunteered to help set up the Navy's wrestling program," Keen says. WAR TIME construction restrictions had also affected the Ann Arbor building trade, making it difficult for Keen to find an office to set up his practice when hereturned. He took the Michigan job for "one more year," in order to locate office space and because Athletic Director Fritz Crisler asked him to. "Then I just got back into it," he states. And he added 25 more years to his Michigan tradition. Last year's team captain, Pete Cornell talks of Keen's heavy reliance on the tradition of Michigan wrestling. "Coach Keen says some- thing to the effect that when you step out onto the mat in the Maize and Blue, the meet is 50 per cent won. A little bit of that sinks in. Michigan teams have done so well and so many wres- tiers have come before you, it gives you a definite edge." But even before Keen was molding the Michigan wrestling tradition, back when he first came to the school, the appeal to tradition was there. Jim Kelly, Michigan's first national wres- tling champion in 1930, explains, "He hasn't changed any I don't think in all those years. Even way back then in the 1930's he emphasized Michigan as a great school to go to. That was true even though at that time he had just come from Oklahoma." - Keen's exposure to Michigan began at A &M where Johnny Maulbetsch, Michigan's All-American fullback in 1914, was athletic director and football coach. Keen, who was born on a ranch in western Oklahoma, played football, basketball, and wrestled. He tells his wrestlers now that when he was at Oklahoma, he was in a fraternity and would get up and run five miles before breakfast. His fraternity brothers thought he was weird. After graduation, Keen took a position at Frederick, Okla- homa, coaching high school football. While there he coached his team to a conference championship, and the next year a state championship. Wrestling at Michigan had been given the status of a minor varsity sports two years before, and the Wolverine athletic department was looking for a permanent coach. In its first two varsity years, 1922-23 and 1923-24, the team fared poorly. In those two years, first under the tutelage of Peter Botcher-"former professional wrestler and at present the proprietor of the Majestic billiard room on State Street" accord- ing to the 1923 Michigan Daily-and then under Coach Dick Barker, the team had not won a single meet in the conference. They beat Michigan Agricultural College for their only meet win in two years. IT WAS TO this uninspiring scene that John Maulbetsch recommended Keen in 1925. And Keen wasn't long in fash- ioning some great individual wrestlers. Four of his matmen made the 1928 U.S. Olympic team, including Ed Don George who was later to become a famous professional wrestler. "Cliff was a little bit heavier than me," Kelly says, "but not much. He would wrestle Ed Don George just to keep him in shape and George considerably outweighed him. Cliff had a lot of trouble keeping him in shape,"Kelly adds with a chuckle. Each wrestler has his own story about Coach Keen's con- ditioning. Bay says, "He's 68 years old and still suits up for prac- tice, still demonstrat~es for the team. He amazes me with his muscle tone. I wrestle fellas on the team from Bohouse on down, but in his forearms and hands even now Coach Keen has more strength than anyone I ever knew." "He can put the legs on anybody on the team and they can't get," this year's captain, Jess Rawls, states. And in one of his classes a few years ago, so the tale goes, there was a big tackle. Keen told the guy, "I'm going to put a pinning hold, the guillotine, on you." The tackle emphatically asserted, "You're not going to pin me." Keen replied, "Yes, I am," and proceeded to accomplish his stated objective. Much of the reason for his physical ability comes from the mental conditioning Coach Keen feels is inherent in the sport of wrestling. "I know some of the boys don't realize it," Bay says, "be- cause we work on holds and moves over in the practice room, but Coach Keen is showing them an awful lot about themselves, about discipline, about respect for authority, about respect for teamwork, and respect for the hard work necessary to obtain a worthwhile goal." His approach is not to overwhelm a wrestler as some coaches do. Chip Warrick, one of Keen's wrestlers in the mid-forties and now president of the wrestling alumni association, notes, "Coach Keen was a leader, not a pusher. He was never quick to anger. It takes a lot to get his goat." Keen has not altered his style since then. For some of the younger wrestlers, his low pressure attitude has been difficult to understand. Jess Rawls explains, "By the time you have his experience, you're set in your ways. You don't want to change strategies that have worked well in the past. Some of what he says may seem stupid to us, but we don't understand. "He doesn't get on you, stay on your back. It hurts him to stab a guy, but sometimes it's necessary. I never saw a coach like him. He knows how to approach a guy." Recruiting, because of Cliff Keen, is also different at U-M then at any other wrestling strongholds. Keen's theory is that an athlete goes out for a sport to benefit from it. "It was a privilege to represent your university," the coach says. "They don't pay you to take history. Why should they pay you to wrestle?" Assistant Coach Bay has the same philosophy. "He doesn't believe in recruiting and neither do I. I hope to God we can survive with this philosophy. We feel that Michigan is going to do a lot more for this boy than he'll do for Michigan. Coach Keen doesn't feel he has to go out and beg somone to come here." Consequently the team doesn't get a lot of what Bay terms "raw, animal talent." Keen's great attribute, Warrick explains, -Daily-Dave Schindel Keen-no longer the driver A !l "Men are Beasts" A A survey of the opinions and SPECIAL tactics of the Feminist Revolution ISSUE that threatens to reshape America. in the March AT YOUR NEWSSTAND NOW -READ AND USE DAILY CLASSIFIEDS- "was that he could take guys like me who had never wrestled before and turn them into fairly good wrestlers." ON THE BENCH during a meet that low pressure attitude is visible. It's rare that Coach Keen shouts at his players or the referees. "A lot of thought goes into what he says." Bay states. "It's carefully thought out, not a wild impulse, When he does jump up to yell at someone, it's to gain a reaction, hopefully a favorable reaction, from a guy on the team. No one's infallable. It doesn't always happen. But he has poise bellowing at the top of his lungs because he knows what he's doing." Keen's heart attack a decade ago may have mellowed his antics some. It came during the period when he was setting up his wrestling equipment company and designing a new head- gear. "The heart attack was about the same as Bo Schem- bechler's," Mrs. Keen relates. "It could happen to anyone if they're worried about things. He fully recovered, but as you get older, you have to watch yourself." One other aspect of his life was changed, too, Mrs. Keen recalls. "He quit smoking as soon as he had the heart attack. He used to go out in the corridor and smoke so his boys wouldn't see him. He never did want them smoking, of course. He quit smoking right then and said never again." It is to his business, now a nationally known manufacturing and supply company for wrestling equipment, that Keen plans to turn to when he gets out of coaching. "Now that he's getting out of coaching," Mrs. Keen adds, "he said that we won't see anyone anymore. I told him that now we'll see everyone." His ability to remember each wrestler, almost to the point of knowing what they were doing yesterday, has swayed many matmen to come to Michigan. One of the first impressions Bay has of Keen came when the coach was showing Bay the campus. The two had stopped off in the wrestling practice room, then in the IM Building. "I'd been in other wrestling rooms where they had the pictures of past champions on the walls, but he could tell me about what each of those guys was doing that day. I knew right then that anyone who could formulate a type of relationship with a wrestler that could last a lifetime was who I wanted for a coach. He was interested in you far beyond those four years." EACH YEAR, during the annual homecoming banquet when the varsity wrestlers get together, Keen gets up to say a few words. Then he will go around the room, row by row saying hello to the people in attendance, and perhaps tellingsome story about one of the grapplers. "In practice, he's always talking about how past wrestlers beat somebody and what move they made," Rawls says. "He might forget to pick you up. He might come out of a building and get into the wrong car. But he doesn't forget his wrestlers." That assurance was what convinced Jess to come to Mich- igan. As a wrestler, he didn't want to be used two years and then forgotten when his tender was up. As a black, he didn't want to be used as he had been used in the South. "Coach Keen told me he wasn't a prejudiced man," Rawls states. "There weren't a lot of black people who wrestled at Michigan, but he said that didn't mean he was prejudiced." In the nationals last year, Jess just missed finishing first in the country. His only loss was a narrow 6-5 decision to John Woods, and it came on a takedown with only 20 seconds left in the bout. It was a disappointing moment for Jess, but the grap- pler relates emotionally, "Coach Keen came over to me and said, 'Jess, you're the first black guy to win anything for me.' I said, "Yeah, coach, I know what you mean." And I thought, "That's not the last thing I'm going to win for yo. With conviction in his voice, Rawls states, "Maybe I wasn't his first national champion, but I'm going to be his last." That intense personal motivation is not atypical of wres- tling. But the coach behind it is. When his wife comments, "He's no angel. The next time I have words with him, I'll call you. He's human," some of the perspective returns. But, as his assistant coach says, "In 45 years of wrestling, the opponents have changed, the schedules, the assistant coaches, the rules have all changed. The one thing that's never changed in Michigan wrestling is Cliff Keen." 1 4 III ART Join The Daily Sports Staff SALE Iibert/UAinc. q An Entertainment S .wits of Tva,,aameriea Corpomtt les A Michigan League: Michigan Room February 27-28 10 A.M. 10 P.M. ii Ii i Come and See-Something for Rich and Poor * proceeds to{ STUDENT MOBILIZATION COMMITTEE *4 'er ATTENTION: Students, Faculty, and Staff 1969-0 DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARDS Six Awards of $750 each Nomination forms for DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARDS FOR INSTRUCTORS, ASSISTANT PROFESSORS, AND JUNIOR AS- SOCIATE PROFESSORS are available in Room 2248, Student Activities Building: The deadline for submission of forms has been extended to: MARCH 9, 1970 c.,t., HA Rt1 4A M1 fa n .... W TPIPI ['A tn" LBERT/UA STEREO TAPE GOES nNR ONAL CARTRIDGE CASSEIES Liberty/UA Stereo Tape introduces an.ther first for the Cartridge & Cassette consumer: Tape Goes International. 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