Anthony Servidone's first exposure to wrestling came as a fifth grader, when his mom dragged him to watch his older brother, Mark, wrestle at the junior high school. "I wasn't the tallest guy in school," Anthony recalls "and wrestling seemed to present more opportunities for me than basketball." Two years later, Anthony joined the junior high team and in ninth grade, made the varsity at Columbia High. He wrestled varsity for four years and was captain his junior and senior years. He placed in the Class A Section 2 tournament and trained with Joe DeMeo at ATWA, finishing second in the state in Greco-Roman. Anthony went on to earn a bachelor's degree in physical education from SUNY Albany- Empire State College and a master's degree in Education from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. While in college in 1988, he was asked by the Columbia High principal to help coach the Columbia High School wrestling team. The program was down to just nine athletes, and was in serious jeopardy of elimination. He agreed to help out his alma mater, and the rest, as they say, "is history." Anthony has just completed his thirty-first year with the Columbia High School wrestling program. Anthony starting coaching at Columbia during the 1988-89 season as the varsity and junior varsity co-coach and went on to become the first ever Columbia alum to become a head wrestling coach in 1991-92 season. After a hiatus from 1997-99, when he worked as the modified coach and six years an assistant coach for the varsity from 1999-2005, Anthony returned as head varsity coach, and has been there since. Anthony has coached at every level in the Columbia wrestling program. Anthony has enjoyed over 340 career wins as a coach. His teams have won a total of 10 Suburban Council Division Team Championships, including six straight from 2010 to 2016. The 2018 Team won the Class A Championship & the Section 2 Division 1 Team Championship. Anthony has coached eleven NYSPHSAA All- Academic teams, eleven Section 2 Class A finalist teams and earned the prestigious NYSPHSAA plaque, given out to the top two teams in the Classification Section. Anthony says that some of the highlights of his coaching career came when his 2011-2012 team won both the prestigious National Level Events at the "Virginia Duals" tournament and the KSA Duals in Orlando, Florida. Columbia High was only one of two New York team in the history to ever win the Virginia Duals Tournament. Anthony has coached 43 Section 2 Class A champions, 103 Section 2 D1 Place finishers, twenty-one Section 2 Division One Champions, and fourteen New York State-place-winners (including four state tourney finalists). His 2011-2012 squad sent five wrestlers to the New York State Championships Tournament. Anthony has also been deeply involved in the off-season with both freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling. He has coached twelve high school National All-Americans and eighteen New York State freestyle and Greco-Roman State Champions. Anthony currently serves as the New York-USA Wrestling Junior State and Regional Director and on the staff of the New York National Wrestling Team. He was the NY National Cadet Duals Team Head Coach from 2011 to 2015 and in 2017, when the Cadet team placed third at Fargo. In 2018, Servidone was selected as the Albany Times-Union "Wrestling Coach of the Year." He has also been voted the Section 2 Class A coach of the year four times. For several years, Anthony was Columbia Highs' head football coach and a varsity baseball assistant coach. In 2004, his baseball team won Section 2 Class AA NY State Championship. During his tenure as head football coach his teams twice reached the Section 2 Class AA playoffs. In May of 2012, Anthony was inducted into the Columbia High Athletic All Sports Hall of Fame. But Anthony states that the biggest thrill of his career has been the joy and fulfillment that comes with coaching and being afforded the opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of the young men and women he coaches. The Upstate New York Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame is delighted to induct Section's II legendary Coach Anthony Servidone to the National Wrestling Hall of Fame at Stillwater, Oklahoma.