Wrestling coach, girls’ golf coach, and drivers’ education teacher Joel Gilbert won the District VI Coach of the Year award for the second year consecutively. Gilbert has been coaching wrestling for 28 years and has been the high school team’s head coach for 20.
“How I coach has changed a lot, the sports have changed a lot,” Gilbert said. “It’s gotten a lot better, a lot more technical. The old approach is ‘you got to do it this way. This is the only way to do it. You got to do it my way’ [but] you can’t have that approach. My philosophy is always what works best for you, build off of the athlete, if I’m able to help them in any way possible, or find somebody that can help them, that’s my goal as a coach, to try to get the best out of them as an individual and an athlete.”
Gilbert credits his wrestling team and their skill for winning the award. Junior wrestler Gavin Ciampoli won the PIAA state championship–which is the first time the high school has won gold in 52 years.
“It makes [winning] easy when you have good guys,” Gilbert said. “For the most part, we had an outstanding team this year, and our guys went out and competed, we hit some of the hardest moments throughout the season, and they did well at all these tournaments. Being Coach of the Year is not [just] something for me, it’s something for them too, because they earned the title for me. They worked and they put the time and the effort in, and I’m grateful for what they did throughout the year.”
To Gilbert, wrestling is about the team as a whole and their collaboration with one another. He claims he attempts to foster an environment for growth rather than pressure his wrestlers, focusing on aspects of schooling like attendance, grades, and discipline rather than scores.
“It’s my job as a coach to kind of keep them on the right path. I [used to be] more focused on them being a district champion, a state champ,” Gilbert said. “Today, I’m more focused on just what kind of people they are.”
Winning Coach of the Year for the second season in a row came as a shock to Gilbert, but he claims his team has been consistent in their skill which has allowed him to win Coach of the year again.
“It’s a little surreal to a point, but I think our guys have really put a lot of effort into the sport,” Gilbert said. “And there’s not just one or two of them; there’s eight to 10 of them that are pretty good. I think when you have a culture, a climate, everybody kind of gets on board doing the right thing.”
Gilbert also believes that leadership is a major part of the sport and helped him in winning the award. He credits his athletes for trying their hardest, and trusts that the wrestling team will continue to win.
“We’ve had some really great kids come through the program, some great leaders,” Gilbert said. “When you have good leadership, things kind of fall in place at times. To me, that’s what we’ve been. I’ve been blessed with it here, so I can’t complain. The program is just rolling right along. There’s still good kids coming through the program right now, and I think we’ll be one of the better programs in the school district for a few more years.”
