STILLWATER, Okla. — Former Oklahoma State wrestler Charles Hetrick is this year’s recipient of the Gallagher Award to be presented before the Aluni Dual against Oklahoma on Dec. 9.<\/p>\n
The Gallagher Award is “presented annually to an OSU wrestling alumnus who exemplifies the spirit and leadership eminent in the tradition of champions.”<\/p>\n
“I never had the luxury to wrestle for Mr. Gallagher, but I knew him quite well, “Hetrick said. “My high school coach wrestled for Mr. Gallagher so I was familiar with the system. His philosophy was ‘there never was a horse that couldn’t be rode, nor a man that couldn’t be throwed.’ He was one of the pioneers in wrestling in this part of the country.<\/p>\n
“This is a great honor. I remember when Gallagher Hall was built and I always wanted to compete there, and I finally got the opportunnity after World War II.”<\/p>\n
Hetrick began at Oklahoma A&M in 1941. After serving five years with the United States Marine Corps during World War II, Hetrick enrolled in Southwestern Tech in Weatherford before returning to Oklahoma A&M in 1947.<\/p>\n
Hetrick was a two-year letterwinner at A&M from 1949-50. In 1949, he was crowned national champion at 128 pounds and was named the Outstanding Wrestler of the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n
Hetrick assumed his coaching career as soon as his wrestling career ended in 1950. He started his career at Salina High School in 1950 before retiring from Blackwell High School, his alma mater, in 1974. Hetrick also served as the head coach at Stillwater High School and Bartlesville Sooner High School.<\/p>\n
During his time as a head coach, Hetrick coached 26 individual state champions and 21 wrestlers to runner-up finishes. He won three team state titles and had one state runner-up finish as well.<\/p>\n
Hetrick has had 26 wrestlers go to college on scholarship. Of those wrestlers, four won NCAA championships, eight were NCAA runners-up and 10 went on to become Big Eight champions. Twenty-three of his wrestling alumni went into coaching as well.<\/p>\n
Hetrick was inducted into the Oklahoma High School Coaches Hall of Fame in 1968.<\/p>\n
Hetrick joins past winners that include OSU coaches John and Pat Smith, Olympic gold medalists Frank Lewis, Doug Blubaugh, Kenny Monday, Kendall Cross and 2005 recipient Bobby Douglas.<\/p>\n
Past Winners:<\/p>\n
1986 “Rex Peery
\n1987 “Frank Lewis
\n1988 “Myron Roderick
\n1989 “Tommy Chesbro
\n1990 “Joe McDaniel
\n1991 “John W. Divine
\n1996 “Ray Murphy
\n1997 “John Smith
\n1998 “Grady Peninger
\n1999 “Kenny Monday
\n2000 “Pat Smith
\n2001 “Kendall Cross
\n2002 “Mike Sheets
\n2003 “Doug Blubaugh
\n2004 “Grover Rains
\n2005 “Bobby Douglas
\n2006 “Charles Hetrick<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
STILLWATER, Okla. — Former Oklahoma State wrestler Charles Hetrick is this year’s recipient of the Gallagher Award to be presented before the Aluni Dual against Oklahoma on Dec. 9. The Gallagher Award is “presented annually to an OSU wrestling alumnus who exemplifies the spirit and leadership eminent in the tradition of champions.” “I never had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-sD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}