Wm. Penn's Dooley closes wrestling coaching career - Physical toll too much, but Dooley will continue as Colonials' football and baseball coach

William Penn head coach Marvin Dooley (right) watches one of his wrestlers with assistant Jason Land during the quarterfinal round of the individual state DIAA tournament at Dover High School Friday.

DOVER – For coaches, wrestling is different than other high school sport. It requires a level of participation others do not.

When Marvin Dooley felt he couldn’t flop around the mat, tangle with wrestlers and demonstrate moves the way he could before, he decided the 2016-17 season would be his last as William Penn High’s coach.

Tearing himself away is no easy task for Dooley, 49, who’ll continue as head football and baseball coach at William Penn, jobs he has held since the 2013-14 school year.

He has been wrestling coach, however, since January of 2004.

“I can’t do the stuff I did when I was 25,” Dooley said before taking a matside chair during the 2017 DIAA state individual championships at Dover High Friday. “I have back spasms all the time. More and more of the teaching I give to Jason [Land, one of his assistant coaches]. I just talk and he does the demonstration. It really comes down to my body breaking down.

“I can stand on the sideline, I can look at film, I can hit ground balls,” said Dooley, referring to tasks football and baseball coaches handle. “Wrestling is just a unique thing. I’m involved. Up until last year, I wrestled three days a week. But I just haven’t been able to do the things I wanted to do. My back was so bad this year I missed practice, and I never did that.”

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No. 1 seed Jackson Dean of Caesar Rodney (top) works to a win against Taqee Williams (8th seed) of Dover at 132 pounds during the quarterfinal round of the individual state DIAA tournament at Dover High School Friday.

So he will step aside, leaving a sport that also depends more than any other on a coach willing and able to spread his passion for the sport over to teenagers who may not be as inclined to do the work it requires. He has recommended Land takes over.

Dooley was a two-time state wrestling champ at William Penn – he was also All-State in football and drafted into pro baseball as a pitcher – who returned to coach as an assistant under Jack Holloway, his mentor with whom he still commiserates on a regular basis.

Holloway, now athletic director at Tower Hill, last year became just the second Delawarean enshrined in the National Federation of State High School Associations’ Hall of Fame. Holloway was William Penn wrestling coach for 25 seasons through 2001, going 297-35 with seven state team titles.

“Marvin is New Castle through and through,” Holloway said Friday at Dover. “What I always loved about the kids in New Castle was, you can’t teach tough and you don’t have to teach tough, because toughness is a given. And what you see is what you get. There’s not one ounce of phony. What you see all comes from the heart. There’s no façade. It’s all real. It’s all sincere. And they see that in Marvin. They know that. They respect him because he respects them.”

When Dooley attended William Penn, the New Castle high school benefited from a strong St. Peter’s wrestling feeder program that he said no longer exists and it attracted most of the students from the community. Like all northern New Castle County traditional public high schools, William Penn now loses more students to vo-tech, Catholic, military, charter, private and other non-traditional schools, which negatively impacts sports teams because the community is less invested.

Dooley’s William Penn teams still logged a 246-94 record and won Blue Hen Conference Flight A dual-meet titles in 12 of his 14 seasons, keeping alive a dominance that stretches back into the 1970s. The Colonials also won 12 Blue Hen Conference Tournament titles under Dooley.

His wrestlers won nine state individual championships, including son Brandon in 2015, which Dooley calls the highlight of his coaching stint, and 47 Blue Hen titles.

“He takes us to our limits,” said William Penn senior 285-pounder Charlie Hope Jr. “He makes us really dig deep and go further than even we think we can go and find the animal inside of us. Football is more team-oriented but wrestling is one-on-one on the mat and you really have to push harder and he makes sure we do that.”

After assisting Holloway for six years, Dooley was head coach at St. James in New Jersey and then Christiana before assisting former Colonial teammate and Holloway successor Jim Zimmerman, then succeeding Zimmerman when he stepped down because of professional and family obligations.

“He has total dedication,” William Penn assistant coach Dennis Fromal, also a former Colonial wrestler, said of Dooley. “Not just to building wrestling but to building young men to put into society so if they decide to go on to college or go into a working field, they’d have total respect from their peers. He instilled dedication in all aspects of life. He told the kids all the time, ‘We’re not just here to wrestle. We’re here to build character.’ ”

Dooley hopes to stay involved in wrestling in some manner, perhaps officiating or making periodic practice or clinic appearances.

“I love the sport,” said Dooley, who was state coach of the year in 2007. “When you go home, you can’t put wrestling down. But it takes a toll on you, and I can’t do it the way I’ve always done it, which is being down in the trenches. Will I miss wrestling? I revere wrestling. You can’t imagine the relationships that you build.”

Finishing touches

Two quarterfinal upsets were delivered against No. 2 seeds by No. 7s on Friday. At 113, Sanford sophomore Trent Wall decisioned Middletown’s Hunter Hamill 5-3. At 145, A.I. du Pont senior Jamier Schaener won on the ultimate tie-breaker 3-2 against Dover’s Nicholas Lee. That set up a semifinal matchup against Sanford’s No. 6-seeded Luke McDonough, who won 3-1 in overtime against No. 3 Ryan Juarez-Robertson from William Penn in the quarterfinals. Sixth-seeded Jamie Schirmer from Sussex Tech also reached the semifinals at 285.

Two defending state champs – Sussex Central’s Brandon Bautista and Sanford’s Andrew Brooks – will meet in a 160 semifinal Saturday. Bautista won at 152 last year and Brooks at 138. On the other side of the bracket is defending 160-pound champ Cory Lawson from Cape Henlopen.

An exhausted Loma Thomas of McKean (seeded 4th) celebrates after beating A.I. du Pont’s Juan Jones (5th) at heavyweight in the quarterfinal round of the individual state DIAA tournament at Dover High School Friday.

The lowest seed to win in Friday’s first round was Mount Pleasant junior Nahid Hossain, who was No. 11 at 126 pounds.

Smyrna’s Tony Wuest, the top seed at 195, had pins in 32 and 15 seconds Friday.

Wrestling resumes Saturday with consolations at 10:30 a.m. and semifinals at 11 a.m. Consolations continue in the afternoon. Fifth-place matches begin at 5:30 p.m. on three matches directly followed by third-place matches. The championship finals are at 7.

Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter @kevintresolini.