Centennial graduate and three-time state champion Austin Kraisser was named the wrestling coach at St. Mary’s Ryken last week. Kraisser discussed his vision for the program and more with the Howard County Times.
Note: Some questions and answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
What made this opportunity the right fit for you?
There’s a lot of great qualities about St. Mary’s Ryken as a school. Timeline wise for me, I think it’s the right time to get into coaching. The opportunity was also good timing. They’ve got a good history of wrestling. They’ve got a lot of background. They’ve given me a lot of opportunities and freedom to run the team and coach it the way I want to coach. They’ve given me lots of resources and materials. They really want to see wrestling do well. The school, the principal, the president and the athletic director are all very on board with competing and doing well within the conference and getting people to do well in the independent state tournament and national preps as well.
What is your vision for the program?
Right away, I want to compete for a conference title. I’ve got the backing of the administration. Then as the years go on, we can recruit good kids, stapling Ryken as a top team in Maryland within our conference, that we can compete with anybody and go to these big tournaments and have placers and making St. Mary’s Ryken known as a wrestling school.
Your father, Cliff, is a legendary wrestling coach in Howard County. What are some of the coaching lessons that you’ve learned from your dad?
My dad was very excited. He’s been a staple in my life as a coach, as a father, as a role model, that I want to be a good representation of. Stuff he’s taught me along the way about competing, about how winning is very important, but also, we’re helping shape the lives of these young men. Obviously, we want them to win, but we want them to do things right. We’re not going to cut corners. We want to do stuff that creates a good lifestyle for these kids and create an environment where they can succeed, not only in wrestling, but every other aspect of their life. And also use wrestling as a conduit to succeed once they’re done wrestling or graduating from the school. They can still use all the lessons they learned to be successful in life.
How excited are you to form your own coaching philosophy?
I learned a lot from my dad. I had a lot of good college coaches that I got to know and different styles of wrestling. What I want to do is take my favorite parts and the best bits of each coaching style that I was part of and try to fuse those all into one to give the best possible chance for success and lifestyle for the kids on my team. One thing that was very important to me that I think helped my teams succeed when I was wrestling, was being able to trust everyone. Not just the coaching staff, but my teammates and making the environment feel like a family. We’re not just in it for us. I know it’s an individual and team sport, but every single one of us is backing up the next one. You can trust every guy at the weight above and below you to do their job and ideally in this successful environment do very well just because everyone’s got that trust.
Have you had a chance to meet with any of the returning wrestlers?
I’ve reached out to the team, so I’ve gotten in touch with a couple of kids from the past years and some kids that are coming into their freshman year. I’ll also be working at the school, so I’ll be on campus every day, interacting with kids on the team and not on the team. I’m really excited to get to know them personally. I’m sure I’ll see them all around campus before the season. I’ll have some preseason meetings, some interest meetings, some preseason workouts for the guys that aren’t competing in other sports. I’m getting excited to build those relationships and allow them to know what kind of coach they’ve got before the first day of practice.
What excites you most about this opportunity?
I’m most excited about getting to work with young kids of the Maryland community. I grew up wrestling in Maryland. I think we’ve progressed as a state in wrestling the past couple of years. We had three people from Maryland in the Olympics for the U.S. just a couple of weeks ago, So, just continuing to build on the foundation of young kids discipline wrestling and having that continue to grow. I can be a part of that and use all of the things that I’ve learned in my career to be able to implement that, and just keep helping these kids grow and get better and continue to represent Maryland as they get better.”
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