WIN Magazine Coaches Corner: Kyle Martin, Pennsylvania USA Wrestling

Heading into his senior year at Connellsville High School in southwestern Pennsylvania, Kyle Martin planned to shovel gravel for the rest of his life.

“I shoveled asphalt and gravel all day, and college wasn’t in my future,” Martin recalled of those long days in 2003. “Going to college never sunk in even though I had decent grades, but my parents pushed me. Still, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life.”

It wasn’t until the late legendary Connellsville wrestling coach Tom “Dirt” Dolde, an avid history buff who taught in the district for 44 years, took Martin on a trip to Gettysburg to see the historic battlefields that it finally registered. The a-ha moment struck him like a cannon’s thunder rolling over Cemetery Ridge.

Martin, who reached the podium at the 2004 Pennsylvania state tournament with an eighth-place finish, enrolled at Slippery Rock. When the program was terminated after his freshman season, he opted to stay the course, focusing on his future career instead of wrestling.

“When I went out on the battlefield, I fell in love with history,” Martin recalled. “He (Dolde) encouraged me to become a teacher because teaching and coaching go hand-in-hand. Being a teacher has made me a better coach and being a coach has made me a better teacher.”

The young kid who once saw himself working blue-collar manual-labor jobs obtained two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. With an insatiable hunger for learning, Martin’s zeal for reading, writing and teaching crossed over from the academic sphere onto the wrestling mats.

In 2015, he began to invest in Mike Clayton’s national education program. That is when Martin started to elevate himself as a coach, he posited.

“Realizing you’re probably not that good at coaching when you start is important. I knew wrestling, but I was not really good at coaching. It helped me get motivated to drown myself in resources.

“When you find yourself in a room you feel like you don’t belong in … you are on the right path. I was at the Olympic Training Center (OTC) at a World Team camp, and I am looking around and see John Smith, Cael Sanderson, the Brands brothers, Jordan Burroughs, Kyle Snyder, and I am thinking, ‘What am I doing here? I don’t belong here.’

“Then I had the realization … that is where I needed to be at the time to jump levels as a coach. Consistently try to find yourself in rooms you feel like you don’t belong in.”

Now a USA Wrestling gold-certified coach, Martin took the reins at Norwin High School in 2020 while lecturing as an adjunct professor and serving as a dean of students.

On the wrestling front, he doubles as Pennsylvania USA Wrestling’s men’s director and a national team coach as well. This past July in Fargo, Martin was recognized as USA Wrestling’s Development Coach of the Year after Team PA won team titles in four of the six contested divisions.

Among other accomplishments, Martin has taken the Norwin Knights to new heights, having won the program’s first section title in 2023, reaching the team state tournament for the first time and growing the program’s numbers significantly.

Additionally, Landon Sidun captured a Pennsylvania state title as a freshman in 2024 before missing his sophomore season due to injury. Martin’s young prodigy is currently ranked No. 1 in the nation entering his junior season at 120 lbs. and committed to Penn State last month.

Despite achieving success on an individual and team basis, Martin conveys several important perspectives to his student-athletes that stray from their wrestling identities.

Wrestling is what you do, but it is not who you are, he tells them.

“I wrestled, but it isn’t who I am. That is the biggest lesson I push on my athletes now. Yeah, you wrestle now, but it isn’t who you are.

“Just 3% of high school wrestlers will wrestle in college. If you have 100 kids on your team … three might wrestle in college. You can’t make that the identity of your team.”

Martin shared one anecdote of a once-obese student-athlete who never started a single match for Norwin, but his goal was to join the military. He lost over 100 pounds and recently became a United States Marine shortly after departing the program.

“We want these guys to get something out of wrestling that’ll service them for life. He was one of our hardest-working leaders and never once cracked the lineup. He had no wrestling accomplishments whatsoever but changed his life through wrestling. We treat everyone as human beings, not just as wrestlers whose value is only associated with their wrestling achievements.”

Martin makes it a point to coach each and every kid that comes through his program as an individual and as a human, not just as a wrestler.

He writes up an individualized periodization plan for each one to peak athletically during a desired window, which for some might even be during a different sport season.

 “My leadership philosophy has adjusted over the years. You might have some good ideas of what you want out of your athletes, but it might not be what they want. That’s okay. I will do everything in my power to get them to where they want to go.”

And he wants them to know that is a lifetime offer without a warranty.

“I love writing the college and job-recommendation letters. They will always have a resource in me for anything they need. I am their coach for four years, but I am their resource for the rest of their lives.”

Martin is trying to pay forward the inspiration he once received.

“I just want to pour everything I have into other people. My parents poured everything into me. They sacrificed everything for me. They struggled for me to try to do great things. I feel that obligation to pour into someone else because if not, I don’t know what my purpose is.

“We can develop leaders and improve our population. Wrestling is a great microcosm of that. We could do every single thing right and outwork everybody and still lose in wrestling, and that is the same thing in life. I have tried to do everything right in life, and I’ve still been punched in the face.

“It builds that resilience. It all comes down to learning and growth.”

For Kyle Martin, it is no longer about shoveling gravel. It is about shaping character, one human at a time.