STILLWATER, Oklahoma – Legendary wrestling coach John Smith is learning how to adjust to retirement. In fact, he’s still unsure what he’ll do for the rest of his life, though not for a lack of options.
“I’m looking forward to, over the next six months, figuring out what retirement is,” Smith said. “I need to find a new path.”
The famed wrestling coach’s supreme attention to detail, work ethic and intensity during his 33 seasons at Oklahoma State University produced five national championships, 33 individual champions and 153 All-Americans. But it left little time for anything else.
While Smith was still coaching, he thought the demand for his time would subside when he finally decided to retire. He has since learned how wrong he was.
“There’s a lot of people that have requested a lot of things, really good things,” Smith said. “I’m too busy of a guy. There’s always something to be done.”
In the 10 weeks since he retired, he has made appearances at four youth wrestling clinics, including one with his brother, Mark. He said he hadn’t been to a single clinic in the past 10 years of his coaching career outside of his obligations for OSU.
Smith has enjoyed ranching over the past 12 years as a hobby and hopes to grow his operation.
He also plans to travel more often to Philadelphia to watch his nephew, J.T. Realmuto, play for the Phillies.
And most of all, he’s excited to be more involved with his youngest son, Levi, a wrestler at Stillwater High School, and his middle son, Sam, a redshirt freshman on the OSU team. His oldest son, Joe, takes after his father and coaches a wrestling club in Tulsa.
In a way, Smith’s main obstacle in retirement may be his immunity to boredom.
NBC Sports offered Smith what would have seemed like a perfect post career opportunity: rejoining their broadcast team as a fan-favorite wrestling analyst for the Paris Olympics.
He declined.
“I needed time away,” Smith said. “I thought about it, but it’s a full-time job for two months. That was on top of when I was coaching, and it was really hard. You got to study.”
Smith called the previous two Olympics finals, including coach David Taylor’s gold medal match in Tokyo.
He laughed while discussing the preparation to talk about wrestlers from around the world.
“You know you’re in trouble when you’re making up names, giving them nicknames cause you can’t pronounce their real names,” Smith said. “I don’t need to be worried about anything right now.”
He talked about planning his new life without wrestling, but then caught himself mid-sentence.
He’s John Smith. Wrestling will always be a big part of his life.
It’s just not his job anymore.
“When you coach a long time, you need time to step back and brush off some war scars and find a path in whatever you’re going to do next,” Smith said. “It has been nice.”