Coach Don Bradley began his wrestling career in the winter of 1970 in 7th grade at the Kingswood School in West Hartford, Connecticut. As a senior six years later he captained his team, wrapped up a modestly successful career and matriculated to Bowdoin College. To his mother’s dismay, both his younger brothers - Burke and Ian - would also wrestle for six years, captain their teams and, happily, enjoy even greater personal success.

Upon graduation in 1980, Don decided to try teaching for a couple of years before heading to graduate school and a possible career in business or law. A key part of that decision was the opportunity to coach wrestling and give back to a sport he had loved. Ultimately, that passion for coaching overcame the idea of grad school and Don has been teaching history and coaching wrestling ever since.

Don taught and coached at the Fessenden School in West Newton, Massachusetts from 1980-1982 and again from 1985-1987. In between he taught and coached at the Iolani School in Honolulu, Hawaii. At Fessenden, he learned the joy of introducing the sport to young wrestlers in grades 5-9 and at Iolani he was mentored by Coach Carl Schroers who had built his high school team from the ground up to become state champions for the first time.

In 1987, Don left Fessenden to return to the high school level of coaching and teaching with the hope of either building or re-building a great wrestling program. That opportunity presented itself at Belmont Hill in Belmont, Massachusetts and Don has been there ever since. Still teaching history and currently the Head of the Upper School, Don is married to his wife, Christine, of 37 years who more than once jokingly referred to the winter season as a “black hole.”

The late 80’s and early mid 90’s marked a long climb for the team toward respect within a school, where hockey dominated the winters, and beyond to both the Independent School League and the greater New England prep school circuit. It first came to fruition in 1997 when Belmont Hill won the ISL tournament and then overcame the next hurdle by winning the New England tournament for the first time 10 years later.

Since those building years, the team has enjoyed great success winning the Independent School League Graves Kelsey tournament 17 times, the ISL Dual Meet championship 19 times and the New England tournament 6 times. At the National Preps, Belmont Hill wrestlers have earned All-American honors 27 times and 3 have been crowned national champions including Jeff Ott, Jimmy Harrington and Phil Conigliaro who also won the Beast of the East. Since 1990 the team has amassed over 550 dual meet victories. All of this success is credit to the young men who wore the Belmont Hill singlet through those early and hard, but never thankless, days until now when the burden is to live up to the standard of those who came before. It is also credit to an awesome crew of fellow coaches and Belmont Hill teachers over the years from Ian Bradley, Dick Hoffman, Chip Tarbell ’77 and Peter Folan ’93 to the current staff of Dave Leonardis, Todd Davis, George Sullivan ’07, Steve Kaplan ’83, Will Ryan ’17, Marty Williams and Sam Messina. Thanks must also be offered to so many great parents as well as our long serving Athletic Director George Tahan - and Ken Martin ‘65 before him – both of whom were unwavering in their support of this program.

The unofficial motto of Belmont is “working together” and that has been the key to the success of this program – of students with teachers and of wrestlers with coaches – with a mission of winning the right way and thus raising boys to become men of good character.