Coach Mark Skonieczny’s wrestling coaching career has come full circle. The 1981 Streetsboro graduate has returned to his alma matter to become the Rockets’ new head wrestling coach, having been appointed on Sep. 18.
“It means a lot,” Skonieczny told The Weekly Villager. “It is where I always wanted to be and now I have an opportunity to coach at my alma matter. I would say for most people who get that opportunity it is a special feeling. I do not know about pressure yet, but it is a special feeling.”
The longtime wrestling coach stepped down from his post as the head coach at Metro Athletic Conference rival Akron Coventry after his twin sons, Nate and Nic, took over as the head wrestling coaches at Lake Catholic and Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary’s, respectively.
According to Skonieczny, he intended to split his time assisting both of his sons as they settled into their first year as head coaches but considered becoming a head coach again only if a position opened up at Streetsboro.
The cards fell in his favor when former Coach Josh Zupancic stepped down and Skonieczny, 61, returned to where it all started.
“I always dreamed about it and everywhere I went, I was always watching those Streetsboro kids,” he said. “They were wearing the same uniform I wore so for me to finish my career where I started is an amazing feeling.”
Having grown up in Streetsboro, Skonieczny said he became interested in wrestling because he enjoyed how much of an individual sport it was and how little he needed to worry about politics.
The coaches did not decide the starting line-up, that was in the hands of the wrestlers. Skonieczny said all he needed to worry about was winning his wrestle-off in his weight class to become a starter and controlled his own fate from there.
He wrestled on the freshman team in his first year and lettered as a varsity wrestler over the next three years, but never qualified for the Ohio High School Athletic Association Division II State wrestling tournament.
He acknowledged that never becoming a state qualifier was his only regret from his high school wrestling days.
Skonieczny enlisted in the military after graduating high school but continued wrestling, finding a wrestling program when he was stationed in Fort Still, OK and continued competing when he shipped out to Germany.
“Wrestling was big over there in the military and Germany and when these coaches found out you were an Ohio guy they came looking for you because they knew Ohio was one of the toughest States in the country in the sport,” he added.
Skonieczny competed in all-military tournaments during his time stationed in Germany, collecting six individual titles and finishing once as the runner-up before completing his tour and returning home.
According to Skonieczny, he pushed wrestling aside to focus on starting a family but rediscovered his passion for the sport when his sons started competing.
He said that once his first son turned 5, he enrolled him in youth programs and he soon started running those programs, then oversaw the Akron middle school programs and transitioned into an assistant varsity wrestling coach at Walsh Jesuit.
Skonieczny said when he started coaching youth wrestling, it was like starting from square one again.
“You had to take those steps all the way back and start teaching this sport from the very beginning because they were such young kids,” he said. “So you had to teach a stance, drop set and how to move your feet. You had to really take that sport and as a person who has done it for most of his life, you had to break it all back down to a simple and tiny elementary step.”
Skonieczny was an assistant coach at Walsh Jesuit for seven years, then joined Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary’s wrestling staff as an assistant for four years before earning a promotion to become the head wrestling coach there.
During his time working at Walsh Jesuit and Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary’s, Skonieczny said the programs qualified an average of six wrestlers to the state meet each season.
During Skonieczny’s coaching career in Summit County, his four sons wrestled at his alma matter and three of the four became state qualifiers in all four seasons of varsity wrestling, including one season when three of them advanced to Columbus.
Skonieczny then moved on to Akron Coventry for a few seasons but stepped down when his twins each landed a head wrestling coaching job.
His retirement from being a wrestling coach was short-lived and he now takes over a Streetsboro program brimming with talent.
“I get a group of guys that have been fighting and been on these mats for years, but we are also competing against programs that have the same programs,” he said. “It is common now for wrestlers to start at that first grade level. It is common for all communities now, so it evens out, but it makes coaching a little easier.”
Although the Rockets only return one state qualifier, junior Cohen Klimak, and fields five seniors, Skonieczny likes where his team is at.
“It is perfect because we know now where we stand on where we are building our program,” he added. “Instead of walking in and having nine seniors and those guys leaving and trying to rebuild again, now we have a nice mixture of freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors.
Streetsboro’s season will start when it competes at the North Coast Classic in Independence on December 8th, starting at 3:00 pm.
