Coach made a career of preparing wrestlers for life

An era of Raider wrestling is ending with the coming retirement of Coach Steve Hood, whose professional and personal life was shaped by the sport he viewed as a means to help shape young lives.

"It's been a great ride, a great experience," Hood told The Star recently. "A lot of really good experiences. Athletics gives you an ability to work with kids on a different level than in the classroom. It's an opportunity to help them learn so many life lessons about hard work, and dealing with adversity, and how to prepare. I tell them everything in life is a competition; you compete for jobs, you compete for mates! Everything. And learning how to prepare for that, and deal with the setbacks along the way, and come back stronger. It's been a really good opportunity to help them do that."

Hood's story with Raider wrestling started in the 1971-72 school year when Lake Roosevelt started as a school and he wrestled for the team.

Hood, whose day job is teaching auto mechanics at the school, became an assistant coach in 1991, then head coach in 1998. During his 21 years as head coach, the wrestling program produced 12 state champions and 65 state medalists.

Before Hood's time, there had been only one state champion in the school's history.

Hood said that wrestling has been a lifestyle for him and his family.

His daughter, Brittany Cozza, wrote about that and about her father's wrestling legacy in a Feb. 14 Facebook post:

"28 years ago my dad took a coaching position and we became a forever wrestling family," Cozza wrote. "A year or two later my parents started the local little guy wrestling program and a few more years later my dad started the local freestyle program. For the majority of my youth, my family 'did' wrestling for 9-10 months a year. Dad coached, mom did lots of behind the scenes work and team mothering, Brian wrestled, and I took stats and told my dad when the score was wrong. Throughout those years my dad coached a lot of state champs and even more state placers. He built a very successful program. However, the most amazing accomplishment to me is the relationships he built and lives he impacted. I watched him and my mom, literally take in kids who sometimes had no one and feed them, counsel them, give them wrestling shoes, help them stay academically eligible, and let them know someone was always in their corner. He's taught young people about humility, integrity, hard work and responsibility, not just winning. I've watched him teach valuable life lessons through the sport of wrestling with incredible care. The way he has impacted kids as human beings, not just athletes, is his true legacy."

After winning the state championship in 2018, Raider Tony Nichols said Hood "is pretty much the reason why I won state. He's been there with me since I was 5 years old. ... He's a really good coach."

"He's really helped me all the way up through the program since I was 5," two-time state champ Kaleb Horn said after winning the state championship in 2018. "We've spent countless hours on the road together going to tournaments; he's always texting me, checking up on my grades."

Hood still plans to attend wrestling events, he said, but he looks forward to retiring.

"There are a lot of things about it I will miss," Hood said. "Eighteen-hour days? Eh, I won't miss that."