WOODBURY – It was the 1975-76 school year, and few knew that the new Nonnewaug High School — a campus founded just six years earlier — was on the brink of wrestling stardom.

“It was mentioned to me that they wanted to start a wrestling program,” said John Lawless, NHS wrestling’s first-ever coach. Today, Lawless serves as an assistant coach under current head coach Dave Green.

Little did Lawless know how much NHS wrestling would grow.

“The boys who didn’t make the basketball team had nothing else to do,” Lawless remembers when looking back at his earliest teams. “So they all went to wrestle, and they loved it. It was the kids that made it all happen. You would have one brother go out and then another brother, and it turned into one big family.”

Although Lawless has spent nearly 50 years building this family, he couldn’t have done it alone. Twenty-five years ago, Green joined the program.

Green joined NHS as an assistant coach in 1999 and then was offered the head coaching role for the 2000-01 season, giving 25 years all together as part of the program, and Green and Lawless are still going strong.

Despite this powerful tandem finding immediate chemistry together, Green wasn’t initially seen as an ally to the program as his coaching career began at rival Pomperaug. Everything changed upon Green’s arrival in ‘99, when he was hired as an health and physical education instructor at Nonnewaug.

“We hit it off,” says Green, remembering the immediate bond he shared with Lawless. “He was a PE-health teacher, I was a PE-health teacher; he was a wrestling coach, I was a wrestling coach. We had so much in common.”

From there, the Lawless and Green wrestling legacy grew.

Throughout the program’s 50 years, only two coaches have roamed the sidelines: Lawless and Green. This winter, despite Green’s retirement from teaching on Sept. 30, it will be no different as he’ll maintain his role as the team’s head coach.

For Green, there was never any doubt about maintaining the job — and the family mentality NHS wrestling has worked to create.

“We’ve been doing this long enough where we now have sons of former wrestlers [on our team],” Green said. “We’ve had a lot of families and that’s helped to create a [wrestling] family.”

Current team member Jeffrey Bernardi, a senior at NHS, notices how coaches like Lawless care for student-athletes the same way the “wrestling family” operated back in 1976.

“You can tell they go above and beyond for us,” Bernardi said.

“They’re both kind and thoughtful people,” said Julian Ocasio, an NHS sophomore. “They always work hard and try to get us better.”

For Lawless, his role as coach and mentor is something he takes personally, even telling his athletes he’s always worried about his student-athletes — even beyond the wrestling mat.

“Lawless told us he checks the newspaper to make to sure none of us gets hurt,” Bernardi said when referencing Lawless paging through the morning’s papers to ensure none of his student-athletes were clowning around during Christmas break, Lawless reminding his teams, “you guys are like sons to me.”

As the program closes in on its half-century of existence, the NHS gym is a reminder of the team’s success: 25 league titles, five state championships, and one state runner-up. They are sure they will see more opportunities for more banners in the future.

This season, the team will be lead by co-captains Bernardi and Durkin Stankevich. Both returning wrestlers appreciate their coaches and all they’ve done for their sport.

“The fact that they’ve been around for so long means they have a formula for success,” Stankevich said. “Every year, they take athletes who have never wrestled before and they turn them into successful wrestlers, which tells you what kind of coaches they are.”

For other NHS coaches, the consistency and success that the wrestling program has had is nothing short of inspirational.

One of the many coaches at NHS, Nick Sheikh, a longtime girls soccer and boys tennis coach, has a lot of respect for Lawless and Green.

“Both coaches have shown dedication over decades,” Sheikh said. “[I had] Lawless as a physical education teacher at Nonnewaug, and very early on you can tell he was invested in all the programs at Nonnewaug.”

From the administrative perspective, Declan Curtin, NHS’ former athletic director, has noticed the wrestling program’s ability to create something that transcends generations: a winning culture.

“It’s amazing that our roots are still with us with Coach Lawless and Coach Green,” Curtin said. “It is a family. It is a culture.”

This upcoming season will be especially unique for the program with Green no longer a teacher in the classroom, though he will continue teaching on the mats with Lawless. The team returns a talented group of upperclassmen that are eager to add another memory in the Green-Lawless legacy.

“Green has given me a ton of advice about college wrestling,” Stankevich said. “Lawless’ involvement through these years shows his commitment and motivates me to be even better.”

For those who have witnessed all that Green and Lawless have accomplished, it’s no surprise that this season will once again be a success.

“You think about great tradition and you think about coaching,” Curtin said, “and both of those things are embodied in our entire Nonnewaug wrestling program.”

This story was originally published on NHS Chief Advocate on October 28, 2024.