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By Todd Irwin
sports@altoonamirror.com
Pat Pecora was a legend in college wrestling, especially in Division II, where he led the University of Pitt-Johnstown wrestling team to unmatched heights over his 48 years at the helm.
Pecora, who passed away at 11:58 this past Sunday morning from cancer at the age of 70, was the all-time wins record holder in all levels of college wrestling with 661 wins. He led the Mountain Cats to the Division II national title in 1996 and 1999.
Pecora was named the NWCA Coach of the Year four times (1995, 1999, 2019 and 2022). UPJ won 25 team regional titles, and he was named regional coach of the year 22 times.
Central coach Dave Marko, who has earned 335 wins in 28 years at Claysburg-Kimmel and Central, wrestled for Pecora in 1990 and 1991. He visited Pecora in the hospital on Saturday night, and he knew the end was near.
Marko said his relationship with Pecora grew stronger when he became the coach at C-K and developed his coaching philosophy. But Pecora was so much more than a coach.
"He was family first," Marko said. "He was a God-fearing man. He was everything in my belief you should strive to be as a man. The accomplishments are mind boggling, but it's the kind of person he was that always sticks out to me the most. Guys loved him, and that's why they fought for him because he knew he would fight for them.
"He was such a father to me. My dad died several years ago, and he picked up that slack in so many ways. I've gotten advice from him on everything from money to how to be a better husband to how to be a better father."
Longtime Penn Cambria coach Todd Niebauer wrestled briefly for Pecora until a back injury ended his wrestling career.
"Yes, there were guys who wrestled for him for four years and were All Americans," Niebauer said. "That's important stuff, but you think about how he treated guys like me. He could have easily forgotten about me because I wasn't a guy who was contributing to the team, but not coach.
"He gave you advice about everything. I told him I wanted to get into coaching and any advice that I wanted or offered, I tried to take it in."
Niebauer tries to emulate the caring Pecora had for his wrestlers.
"If you're in a jam, and hopefully it's not a jam where you're in trouble with the law or anything like that, at midnight, who can you count on? I would hope you could call me," Niebauer said. "Coach Pecora was that guy. No matter what you could call him for anything.
"People have referenced don't let go of the rope. If you were hanging over a cliff and you had to choose someone who was holding the rope, Coach Pecora would let his arms fall off before he let you go. He never let anybody go."
Many of his former wrestlers became coaches and that helped build a recruiting pipeline locally to the UPJ program.
"I think he always liked recruiting my guys because my guys would come into his system with a knowledge base that he didn't have to worry about teaching them," Marko said. "Now I couldn't teach to the level that he did because I didn't have the athletes he had. Not exclusively but certainly a hard core of the guys he got was from District 5, 6 and 7."
Fifteen of his wrestlers combined to win 23 national titles, including two-time champion Jody Strittmatter.
"Other than probably Jody Strittmatter, a large portion of his best wrestlers were guys that had unfinished business," Marko said. "He always liked that fighter mentality. Coach always liked to say 'If everything was equal between two guys, I'll take the guy that would win a street fight.'"
Despite battling cancer for a long time, Pecora displayed a positivity that probably surprised many outside of the wrestling community.
"What got him through was God would never put him into a situation that he couldn't battle through and had a reason for it," Marko said. "At the end of the day, he taught so many of us how to live, how to be a father, how to be a husband, how to become a man. In the end, he taught us how to die."
Todd Irwin can be reached at sports@altoonamirror.com and followed on X/Twitter at @ToddIrwin1