Iowa Stalker Coach Mike Duroe
With the Iowa Stalkers capturing the inaugural season of Real Pro Wrestling competition, Coach Mike Duroe says his contribution came not so much from success as a wrestler but from the experiences he’s stockpiled as a competitor and coach.
“My competitive credentials were never stellar, but I learned so much from the people and the programs I was involved with,” Duroe said. “I think I brought expertise in the technical aspect of freestyle and a strong working relationship with all the athletes and other coaches.
“All of the Stalkers, I had (previously) coached at some point, and if athletes trust that a coach will be able to help them, they will respond.”
Duroe’s co-coach with the Stalkers was Tom Brands, Olympic and World Champion. “I coached Tom in 1985 and 1986,” Duroe said. “I’ve been in Tom’s corner in battle, and we had a lot of fun. That (RPW) chemistry with Tom and the athletes was good.”
Duroe’s own time on the mat began as a fourth-grader with a local kids’ group in Charles City, Iowa. “A couple of my neighbors were state high school champions, and I looked up to them,” he said.
Duroe was also the oldest of five boys in his family. “We had a lot of matches around the house — and a lot of broken furniture,” he said.
All the brothers wrestled through high school, but Duroe went on to become a four-time NCAA Western Regional placewinner at Drake University in Des Moines. “I never won a national tournament until I won the AAU National Freestyle Championships in 1983,” he said.
From 1981 through 1984, however, he placed in the USA Wrestling National Open tournaments and spent four years on the national team. He was also a finalist at 57 kilometers in the 1984 Olympic Trials, where eventual champion Barry Davis went on to win silver medal in the Games.
However, Duroe had already started his coaching career in 1978, as an assistant at Northern Michigan University. He served there as head coach from 1980 to 1985, then became an assistant at Northwestern University and coach of the Wildcat Wrestling Club for two years.
Next followed 12 years as the head coach at New Trier High School in Chicago’s northern suburbs, followed by nearly four years with USA Wrestling, where Duroe eventually served as national development coach, national women’s and resident coach.
Along the way, he had earned a bachelor’s degree in education and master’s degrees in education and exercise physiology and has been a member of the board of directors for USA wrestling.
After two years as head assistant coach at the University of Pennsylvania, Duroe returned to his Iowa roots. Since 2003, he has coached the Hawkeye Training Club, been an administrative assistant for the university’s varsity wrestling program and worked with Dan Gable in the support of the sport.
Although Duroe has been a member of the coaching staff for three Olympics, more than a dozen World Championships and several Pan American tournaments, he still recalls the days as an athlete when he was trying to juggle a variety of demands.
“I was coaching, going to school and still trying to stay in shape and train and wrestle myself,” he said.
Those memories are part of the reason he applauds Real Pro Wrestling.
“I think it’s just going to be an amazing opportunity if (the competitors) can make enough money to at least support themselves or their families a little bit, so they don’t have to go through something like I did trying to balance all these things. At least, that’s my hope for the future,” he said.
“The competitive landscape has become so much tougher in American wrestling. You have to train full time to be one of the top guys, and to do that in today’s society is a challenge.
“When you’re a wrestler in Russia or Iran, you get taken care of,” Duroe said. “It’s always put us at a little disadvantage, but the gap widened as people tried to balance everything.”
But the situation is improving, Duroe stressed, due to “great wrestlers, like Dan Gable, who became coaches,” the money USA Wrestling has supplied to support national programs and RPW.
“We are,” Duroe said, “closing the gap.”
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