Veteran Oregon Coach Views Life After Wrestling Career

After 28 years as the University of Oregon’s wrestling coach, Ron Finley is grappling with the concept of retirement.

He will step down after this season, but he can hardly imagine a life away from the sport.

“It would be nice to do something not totally involved with wrestling and just get away from it all,” Finley said. “I don’t know how long I could do that though - probably not long.”

Finley, 58, almost quit the sport three decades ago.

As a freshman at Oregon State, he grew fed up with the running and pushing himself to the point of exhaustion. One day he left practice and vowed not to come back. But his mother had other plans.

“She said, ‘You’re not quitting. You’re going to be an Olympian,”’ Finley remembered.

So he went back to the team, won two Pacific Coast Conference individual championships and placed second at 137 pounds in the 1961 NCAA championships.