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Powerful Clovis teams build foundations with young wrestlers
| Thursday, Feb 28 2008 9:45 PM
Last Updated: Thursday, Feb 28 2008 9:51 PM
Once upon a time, in the Denver suburb of Arvada, Colo., during the Great Depression, Floyd Buchanan went out for his high school wrestling team.
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The wrestling room at top-ranked Clovis High on Feb. 22 as the team is preparing for its appearance in this weekend's state championship meet.
The experience didn't last long, because if teenagers during the Depression could find a job, they worked.
But wrestling left an indellible mark in the mind of Buchanan.
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Once upon a time, Dennis DeLiddo wasn't famous for being the last Fresno State wrestling coach, or an outspoken protestor trying to get that recently axed program reinstated.
He was a high school coach, and his first job was at Clovis High School. He came to Clovis in 1971 and quickly realized he had a friend in the superintendent of the Clovis Unified School District -- one Floyd "Doc" Buchanan.
Buchanan was in the midst of installing a wrestling program in all of Clovis' schools; not just the high schools, but the elementaries and junior highs as well.
He had persuaded the school board to approve the purchase of 10 mats at the princely price of $35,000 for elementary programs and a second mat for Clovis High at $7,000.
Buchanan was thinking back to his wrestling days.
"The board swallowed hard, and then it was over," said Buchanan, now 84 and retired. "I told them I believed co-curricular programs weren't extra; they were part of the program. ... Wrestling fills a niche for kids. There isn't anything better in sports. It's pretty awesome to be out there by yourself and to take a licking and keep going."
But when Buchanan cajoled the school board into its wrestling support, he didn't foresee the other effect it would have: Clovis became a California wrestling powerhouse.
Soon, DeLiddo was coaching Clovis teams full of wrestlers who had wrestled since they were in fifth grade, and instead of teaching them what a takedown was, he could skip straight to technique and strategy.
He won state championships at Clovis High in 1974, '75 and '76, placed in the top five on two other occasions and won nine league titles in his 11-year tenure.
"When I got there, it was my first wrestling job, and the emphasis was just getting rolling," DeLiddo said. "I was lucky to get there in the the early stages of the elementary and junior high stuff, but it was already in motion.
"It's obvious it did me some good."
DeLiddo parlayed his success at Clovis High into the head coaching job at Fresno State, where the wrestling program was cut in 2006 for budgetary reasons.
Meanwhile, Clovis Unified wrestling continued to flourish. When Clovis West opened in 1978, it quickly became a power, winning state titles in 1983, '84 and '89. Clovis High re-established dominance with titles in '90, '91 and '92 under coach Rod Balch.
The Cougars finished third in 1993 and fourth in 1994 but fell on (relatively) hard times, failing to place a wrestler in the top eight at state in 1995 or 1997 and placing just two in 1996.
Although Clovis West remained a factor, and a third high school, Clovis-Buchanan, became competitive in that time, it appeared Clovis' grip on state wrestling had loosened.
* * *
Once upon a time, in Sacramento, there was a devoted wrestling coach named Steve Tirapelle who practiced his trade at Hiram Johnson High School.
Tirapelle liked his job because he could turn the attention of inner-city kids away from trouble and toward the wrestling mats.
So what if Hiram Johnson was never going to win a state championship? Tirapelle was helping kids while enjoying what he calls "mid-level success."
That was his thought process until 1996, when his wife, Jayne, decided the family would move to Clovis with son Adam, who was a state champion at Hiram Johnson in 1995.
"It was the lifestyle, the interest, the fact that people seemed to care about what was going on in the community," Steve Tirapelle said. "Clovis is a lot like that. The kids want to have success and that was appealing to her. She goes to a tournament and there are administrators there helping. Where we came from, I did everything."
Adam Tirapelle, who's now a Clovis assistant coach, won his second state title at Buchanan High in 1996 before moving on to wrestle at the University of Illinois, where he won an NCAA championship at 149 pounds in 2001. Steve, meanwhile took the Clovis High job in 1998.
In a remarkable turnaround, Tirapelle too benefitted from the groundwork Doc Buchanan had laid some 30 years beforehand. From the depths of the mid-1990s, the Cougars had two state qualifiers in Tirapelle's first year, two champions and a third-place finish in 1999 and a second-place finish in 2000. By 2003, Clovis had its seventh state title.
"I don't think Dad is a different coach (now) than he was in Sacramento," Adam Tirapelle said. "But if you give someone good talent, they can turn that into something good. I don't care if it's Dan Gable coaching, if they haven't ever wrestled, you're not going to win a state championship."
* * *
Once upon a time, before any of his state championships, Dennis DeLiddo drove to work at Clovis High, glancing at the freeway sign that marked Clovis.
"I would look at that and say, someday, wrestling people will cheer that sign," DeLiddo said. "That was in the '70s. It came out to be true, which is nice."
Clovis schools will be on full display at the latest CIF state wrestling tournament, today and Saturday at Rabobank Arena.
Buchanan High won its first championship in 2006, finished third last year and hired former University of Iowa wrestler C.T. Campbell (who wrestled for longtime Hawkeyes coach Gable) to run a program that is ranked in the state's top five again and could crown several individual champions.
Clovis West has wrestlers ranked in the top three in three weight classes, Clovis East 125-pounder Steven Fitzgerald is ranked fourth and even Clovis North, the district's newest school, has a state qualifier.
But at the center of it all again is Clovis High. The Cougars are ranked No. 1 in the state and with 10 state qualifiers, should be in a battle with Poway, Gilroy, Modesto-Central Catholic and the other Clovis schools for a state title.
"We do have good wrestling," Adam Tirapelle said. "If you have to pinpoint why, well, No. 1, they have a great start, and that's a big factor. No. 2, it's a high level of coaching, and No. 3, we like doing it and giving a lot of time to it."
* * *
All of the once-upon-a-times have passed, and Doc Buchanan, at 84, isn't sure he'll be up for the trip to Bakersfield.
But every time a Clovis Unified wrestler makes the finals Saturday night -- be it Clovis West 103-pounder Zach Zimmer, Clovis-Buchanan 130-pounder Justin Arredondo, Clovis 140-pounder Scott Sakaguchi or any of half a dozen other who could reach that round -- they'll have, in part, Buchanan to thank.
"You have to learn to win and to lose and what to do when you lose," Buchanan said. "Get up off your duff, and don't be a quitter. I think that's one of the reasons kids make it in life.
"... I think everybody in California knows about Clovis wrestling."