He can vividly remember carrying the Olympic torch in Atlanta in 1996, as thousands of people cheered and his wife and baby daughter looked on. Now it may be his duty to rekindle the fire in the Penn State wrestling program.
Ken Chertow is a world champion, a national champion, a state champion, an Olympian, an NCAA All-American .... You name it, and it's most likely on his list of accomplishments.
The man lives and breathes wrestling. His wife, Laurie, estimates he devotes 16-18 hours a day to his wrestling work. And the Chertow's love every second of it -- watching his Gold Medal Training Camp system expand, as it has done in each of the past 20 years.
"It didn't happen by chance. He's been very committed and very dedicated to it," former Nittany Lion coach Rich Lorenzo says. "He's an outstanding promoter and manager and with his wife assisting him and they do a terrific job with it."
But Laurie, who says she and her husband fall asleep watching taped wrestling highlights on most nights, knows what Ken is capable of doing -- turning Penn State into a national wrestling powerhouse, just like it was when she met him as a Lion assistant coach.
"When we got married, it's been my dream to see my husband be head coach at his alma mater and take the program to where it once was," she says. "I see how hard the man works. He can help the program, the individual wrestlers, the team and the promotion of Penn State wrestling."
Parents in the community, area coaches and kids he has coached believe Chertow would be a good fit for the vacant Nittany Lion coaching position. It's only a matter of the athletic department recognizing the guy in Penn State's backyard, with a huge wrestling complex in his backyard, is the right guy to be one of the nation's most prestigious wrestling coaches.
"I want to get you guys to get scholarships. Hit the books."
Drive five miles from Penn State's campus and you enter one of the top-notch wrestling training facilities in the country.
Enter a driveway with gates that have a metallic wrestler on each of them. Enter a connecting extension to his home, which features a two-story house devoted purely to wrestling, or as the Chertow's like to call it, the Home Training Center, and you enter wrestling paradise.
"It's always been his dream to teach wrestling out of the house," Laurie Chertow says. "And he has accomplished it and we're living his dream."
This short, stocky, bearded man is wrestling a nine-year-old camper, letting him in on a single-leg attempt as 35 pairs of eyes are staring straight up at the duo. The older 42-year-old, donning a gray Nittany Lion wrestling shirt, fights him off before he's able to take him down and puts the four-foot-something boy on his back.
"Any other takers?"
Chertow's son, Alex, 11, steps up. This is Alex's first year wrestling, despite having a two-story extension on his house that consists of a full-length wrestling mat, a mini-store for the training site and a full office for the operations of the camp. Laurie says it was never Ken's intention to push Alex toward wrestling.
With a big smile on his face, Alex gets body slammed to the ground by his father, as the 20 parents who sit around the mat on couches chuckle at the sight of this huge man, dripping sweat, manhandling the little boy for the title of "pride of the household."
Rick Smith, a 1994 Penn State graduate who coaches Lewistown's wrestling program, brings about 20 kids from the elementary program to Chertow's camp for a simple reason. As Smith watches his son, Kyle, grapple with another camper, he talked confidently about the impact Ken has on youth wrestlers.
"You can tell the kids who come here and the kids who don't," Smith says. "Ken teaches you what it takes to be great. My son is already much, much better than I ever was."
This seems to be what separates Chertow from other wrestling instructors. It's why Sarah Rutherford drives her son, Zain, two hours in one direction, twice a week, to Chertow's camps for the last five years.
Zain is a state amateur champion from Line Mountain and has aspirations of becoming a high school state champion, like all of Chertow's serious campers.
"It's worth the trip. My son started out as a non-aggressive kid and has progressed through the coaching of Ken," Rutherford says. "Zain never gives me a hard time to leave our junior high practice and head up on here on the same night to practice. These guys are doing something great, to think these kids want to get in the car after practicing two hours and put in another two-hour practice.
Dawn Wolfe says Chertow's facility is state of the art and she has seen families travel across the country just to have their kids coached by Chertow.
"I don't think a lot of these kids would be at the level they're at if they hadn't come here," she says.
There are at least 30 parents on the edge of the mat, surrounding the facility as their sons are instructed in the middle. There are couches on the side, but many parents elect to sit on the ground and watch as Chertow talks to the kids at the end of the session.
These young wrestlers exert every ounce of energy they haven't already exerted wrestling and focus it on paying attention to his talk.
"...Picture yourself up the street at Rec Hall at Penn State," Ken's talk goes. "You're on bottom and need to get off the bottom. Nobody finishes on you. You gotta have flexibility..."
Laurie says she has seen parents "tear up" at some of the motivational speeches Ken has given throughout the years. His encouragement and enthusiasm is contagious, she says, and inspires these campers to keep coming back to him to be the best.
It's not only about wrestling, though. Nikki Hidlay of Lewistown says Chertow's instruction has helped her two sons, Hayden and Trent, focus on their grades and nutrition. She says Ken genuinely wants his campers to be well-rounded individuals, not just great wrestlers.
"It's the ethics of doing well in all areas of your life," Hidlay says. "If it wasn't for Ken, my son wouldn't have attained the success he did this year. He teaches them different skill sets and is just so motivational."
Carving Out a Niche
Call up a hotel, tell them you are going to rent out their ballroom for the weekend and place wrestling mats from wall to wall so that amateur wrestlers can train.
It may be a unique approach, but Ken and Laurie Chertow have been doing it for years.
"They're great about it. At first, they'll say, 'You want us to do what?' " Laurie says. "They're used to suit and tie expensive deals. But we try to get healthy, nutritious meals in for the kids because we want what is best for them."
The Chertow's worked predominantly out of Huntington, W. Va., Ken's hometown, then moved to sites all over the nation. Laurie says the camp rents out the Ramada Inn in State College to have 500 wrestling campers come out every two weeks. This summer, the Gold Medal Training Camp, which Lorenzo "calls one of the best, if not the best camps in the United States," will travel to 20 states and conduct his private camps at different college campuses and random hotels.
That is, if he doesn't have another job occupying his time.
"If he was offered the [head coaching] position, he is committed to making Penn State wrestling his full-time job," Laurie says. "He never stops working. That's his nature. And that's what he'd do for Penn State."
One parent knows he could do it.
Peggy Durant carpooled with Nittany Lion wrestler Brad Pataky to drive her son, Luke, and Pataky to Ken's camp twice a week. After a two-hour long practice at junior high in Clearfield, Durant would drive the two wrestlers about an hour to have another two-hour practice with Chertow, then drive another hour back home.
Durant says she spent three years watching Chertow instruct and was blown away by how he could gain such respect and have such control over his wrestlers. She said it was stunning how Chertow could walk through a room of 50 or 60 wrestlers and pick out a kid who was doing a technique incorrectly.
Out of all the coaches she has seen, and Durant says she has watched a lot of them, she says Chertow is definitely the best.
"He seems to be able to hone in on whatever it is any particular kid and what will motivate them," Durant said in a telephone interview Wednesday evening. "How he does it, I honestly don't know. It was stunning to see the response he'd get from these kids. He engendered such loyalty and such work ethic. It seemed like those kids would run through a brick wall for him. My son always wanted to perform for Ken.
"My son told me after his career was over, of all the coaches he had, Ken was the coach that could get the most out of him. He said he could reach down inside and pull something out from within himself when Ken was coaching him that didn't come with other coaches."
A Recruiting Class to Grab
Matt Kocher was an NCAA All-American for Pittsburgh and was a Chertow camper himself. He is also an occasional counselor at the camp and likes coming back to help Ken, because the kids feed off his relentless energy.
He is also an assistant wrestling coach at State College Area High School. Next year's recruiting class is chalk full of seniors and has been referred to by many as one of the best groups of talent ever seen in Pennsylvania.
"This recruiting class coming in, the whole country's got their eye on it so it's going to be tough to get all of them," Kocher says. "He's got good marketing skills. I'd imagine that would carry into recruiting. He knows a lot of people in the sport. He knows a lot of coaches and he's connected throughout the whole country."
Chertow's pamphlet for his camp is basically a "Who's Who" of successful collegiate wrestlers in the past 10 years. He has worked extensively with current Lion wrestlers Jake Strayer, Quentin Wright and Pataky.
"Ken has helped me develop through discipline and making a commitment to excellence," Pataky says. "He has an effect on Central Pa., in the fact that he has had many camps throughout the year."
After the two-hour practice, Chertow said he strives to have kids excel and not be average, but to be great wrestlers.
He said he knows a lot of the upcoming high school seniors very well, including Andrew and Dylan Alton and Marshall Peppelman, three of the nation's most sought-after recruits. Chertow says he knows he could enable these wrestlers and any that he coaches fulfill their fullest potential.
"His roads run deep and far in the wrestling community," Laurie says. "He has connections with just about everybody and knows so many wrestlers and so many coaches in the nation."
Earlier in the season, Nittany Lion assistant coach Mark Perry said the coaching staff had focused a lot of its energy on this recruiting class because it was pertinent to keep all the Pennsylvania talent in-state.
Kocher says the business savvy of Chertow, who was actually a biology graduate student at Ohio State, is something that people always talk about, is one of his best assets and could be a key for Penn State wrestling.
"He has good motivational qualities about him. He's enthusiastic about the sport, he's developed a life-long passion for it," Kocher says. "He can carry that and aspire others to do the same. Running a wrestling program is similar to running a successful business. The same sort of things are going to apply. Whether it's recruiting or marketing the program or building Penn State wrestling to be a bigger thing than it is, it's all about being connected."
He's still in their backyard
Nittany Lion coach John Fritz retired after the 1998 season, opening up the head coaching position.
Although Troy Sunderland was offered the spot, it is believed that Chertow was one of the final candidates in the running for the job.
Now, 10 years later, Chertow is still in State College and has set up a successful business for himself. His home training center features a high-tech office and Ken dedicates his life to wrestling. Laurie says she has pictures of her husband balancing their oldest child, Emily, on his knee, while coaching from a corner of the mat.
Lorenzo coached the Lions from 1979 to 1992 and recruited Chertow to come to Happy Valley. Lorenzo said Chertow's hard work and dedication were evident as a wrestler and have enabled him to succeed with his camp system.
"The first thing that stands out about Kenny is his commitment and dedication and passion toward the sport of wrestling," Lorenzo says. "As far as a competitor, I've had a couple people as passionate, as competitive as Kenny, but none were more competitive than him. He was right up at the top of the scale. He was very tenacious and very much a go-out-and-try-to-dominate-your-opponent type of wrestler. He is a student of the game, he watched a lot of film and read a lot of literature."
Chertow served stints as an assistant coach at Ohio State and Penn State. Throughout both tenures, Chertow says each program reached at a high point while he was under control.
His enthusiasm is still contagious. His work ethic is still intense and his approach is still non-stop.
"When everyone else stops, we keep working," Laurie says. "And it has led to success. That's what he'd do for Penn State."
Now, 10 years later, the Penn State coaching position has re-opened, and it is still a job he would love to have.
"If the opportunity presented itself to be able to coach, it'd be a great opportunity for me," Chertow says. "I've followed the team for the past 20 years and I attend the home matches regularly. I've tried to be an ambassador of wrestling, whether I'm instructing 50 wrestlers or 5,000 wrestlers."
