Jim LeMaster
Jim LeMaster began his wrestling coaching career with the Milton Youth program in the early 1980's when his two sons decided to give the sport a try. He had previously coached football, basketball (girls and boys), track, golf and even a chess team all at the junior high level. As he became involved in the sport, wrestling became his passion and only coaching interest. With no experience in wrestling at all, Jim learned by serving as a volunteer coach, then an assistant coach, co-head coach and finally took over the reins of the Ona Junior High team in 1988. With the consolidation to form Milton Middle School, he continued coaching and led the Panthers until his retirement in 2011. Over the years, Jim's teams won 15 conference championships including 7 straight and over 100 Individual conference champions with a dual meet record of 447-42. His team was also ranked first in the coaches polls 4 times. In 2003 he was chosen Tri-State Coach of the year and he rates that team as his best because they went unbeaten competing against Jr. High, High School Freshman and other Middle School teams despite having no ninth graders in their school . Jim coached six wrestlers who went on to be high school state champions, seven wrestlers who went on to wrestle in college and one NCAA All American. Putting a heavy emphasis on academics and community service, Jim's teams never had a team GPA of less than 3.0 and most years every wrestler was on the honor roll. They also established a "Wrestling With Hunger" match held every season where the admission Is a food donation, then make up and deliver food baskets to the less fortunate in the area for Christmas. This project has now spread to many other teams across the state. Jim has written articles for various wrestling publications and served as a moderator on the WV Mat web site from 1998 to present. In his retirement, he enjoys reading, fishing and golf. Jim and his wife of 40 years, Pat are the parents of two sons, Michael and David.
Awards:
Year
2012
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Award
Lifetime Service to Wrestling
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Chapter/Region
West Virginia
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