There are a few things Matt Brickell knows about wrestling.  He knows about winning, having coached 65 state placers and 15 state champs to pair with a Class 5A team championship in 2011.  He knows that it requires dedication — he’s seen it in the athletes that have come through his wrestling room: NCAA All-Americans like the Buraks, Micah and Nathan, and Olympic champions like Henry Cejudo.  And above all, he knows that unlike other sports, wrestling is not a game.  “Wrestling isn’t like team sports. Wrestling is all you,” Brickell said. “When you make a mistake, that’s yours and you got to own it. The beauty is that it teaches us to be better human beings.  The sport makes us accountable.”

Brickell wasn’t always a wrestling aficionado, however. He was a three-sport athlete at Thomas Jefferson in his day, with wrestling being the one he considers “not my best sport.”  He went on to the Univ of Nebraska to row crew and play soccer, eventually earning his degree and pursuing his true passion of teaching. It was when he secured his first job, teaching science at a HS in a small Nebraska town, that he was first approached to coach.

“I first came on as an assistant, but lo and behold the head coach resigned, so I just kind of fell

into it,” Brickell said. “I knew a little but learned a lot. I just kind of had a knack for it.”

Eventually, Brickell ended up back in his home state of Colorado and, after brief stops, at Lewis

Palmer and St. Mary’s, ended up at Coronado HS in 1987.  In his 29 years at Coronado, Brickell has helped guide several notable athletes and teams to Colorado and national glory. Several Coronado athletes have gone on to collect Division I and II honors, and the aforementioned Cejudo finished his final two years of prep wrestling under Brickell’s tutelage before moving on to collecting the sport’s biggest prize in Beijing in 2008.  Plastered on the walls of the Coronado wrestling room are several motivational quotes. One of them, attributed to Thomas Jefferson, reads, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”  It’s one that sticks out as meaningful to Brickell, as evidenced by the athletes who have embodied that mantra.  “It just means that these guys put themselves in position to win,” Brickell said. “Henry, you know, he would work out eight hours a day. When you work that hard, you make your own luck. “Some of the things that stick out to me are more things that they did while not on the mat. Nathan Burak once found a $100 bill in a book he checked out, and he just returned it to the

teacher. We were blessed with great kids and great people.”  But maybe the biggest thing Brickell knows about wrestling is that, while it may be an individual sport, success can’t be achieved alone. “I think a highlight for me is that I got to coach all of my kids in HS (in wrestling and soccer),” Brickell said. “People would say, ‘Well don’t you miss your family?’ But my family was around all the time.  “Behind every good man is a good woman, and my wife, God; if you don’t have that support, that sounding board, I don’t think you’re going to be successful.”