He feels that it is only fitting that he should wrap it up here.

The PIAA Class title won by Schalles at 154 pounds in 1969 kick-started his exemplary, one-of-a kind career that included two NCAA Division I championships at Clarion University, a berth in the finals of the Olympic Trials in 1976, a gold medal at the 1977 World University Games in freestyle competition in Bulgaria, and two Division I college coaching tenures at Clemson and Old Dominion University, which has enabled him to carve his name into the Guinness Book of World Records as the sport of wrestling’s all-time leader in victories (821) and falls (530).

Now 73 years of age, Schalles has been conducting camps and clinics in wrestling for more than 50 years, and he is participating in his final one this week after being invited to teach at the Ken Chertow Gold Medal Training Camp that is being held at the Blair County Convention Center.

Schalles appeared there for an evening coaching session Wednesday and will conclude his career as a clinician there this afternoon.

07/16/25 Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski / Wade Schalles hands out his Ace to Pinning cards to wrestlers during the Ken Chertow Wrestling Camp at the Blair County Convention Center on Wednesday evening.

“This is my swan song,” Schalles said before taking the mat to tutor young wrestlers at the Convention Center Wednesday evening. “It’s been 60 years since I started wrestling, and I’ve been instructing at camps for the past 52 years.

“It all started for me in Hollidaysburg and here in Blair County, and after Kenny invited me here to work at his camp, I thought that it was only right to end it here,” said Schalles, who lives in Orlando, Fla. and has known Chertow – a former Penn State wrestling All-American — for over four decades. “I’ve liked (instructing) a lot, and I’m very good at it. I’ve been motivated to give the young wrestlers at these camps top-level instruction over all of these years, and to see their eyes light up when they’re learning something new.

“But this is my last camp, and when I am done here Thursday afternoon, I am going to take my shoes off, and lay them down in the middle of the mat,” added Schalles, who has no immediate family members still living in this area. “I owe Blair County so much, the people here have been so supportive of my career and friendly every time that I come back.”

Schalles and his wife, Debra, are the parents of six adult children – four biological children and two adopted children. Schalles and his wife have eight grandchildren, and a ninth on the way. Schalles, who has written six published novels and writes articles for a variety of other publications, just figures that it is time to turn over a new leaf.

“I love writing,” said Schalles, who has been inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, the Clarion University Sports Hall of Fame, and the Blair County Sports Hall of Fame, and who said that his writing subject matter now includes material including such diverse topics as the CIA and romantic love affairs, as well as wrestling.

07/16/25 Mirror photo by Patrick Waksmunski / Wade Schalles instructs on how to fight off a single leg takedown during the Ken Chertow Wrestling Camp at the Blair County Convention Center on Wednesday evening.

Schalles has led a life and wrestling career that is worthy of a Pullitzer Prize-winning novel.

It all started for Schalles back in 1969, when he overcame a 5-0 deficit in his PIAA state championship match at University Park’s Rec Hall against highly-touted John Chatman of Trinity High School in the WPIAL. Schalles reversed Chatman in the third period, then put him on his back and pinned him midway through the third period to win the gold medal at 154 pounds.

That was the start of a very special journey for Schalles, and one that he considers to this day his most important step. He offered an interesting analogy.

“If you become a multi-millionaire, it’s when you make your first million that you (know that you’re going to succeed),” Schalles said. “Everything that you do after that is just repeating the same formula over and over again.

“And so it is in athletics,” Schalles said. “When you finally get the confidence to look in the mirror and tell the person that you see there that they are good, and that they are on the right track, that is the most important thing. And for me, winning that first state championship was like making my first million.”

Schalles went on to set the NCAA wrestling world on fire at Clarion, where he won three NCAA titles. After capturing a Division II championship, Schalles won Division I gold medals at 150 pounds in 1972 – when he was named that tourney’s Outstanding Wrestler — and at 158 pounds in 1973.

Clarion’s overall record in his collegiate career at Clarion was a scintallating 153-5-1, with an eye-opening 109 falls. The Schalles Award is now presented annually by Cliff Keen Athletics and WIN Magazine to the nation’s best college and high school pinners.

For Schalles, pinning an opponent was always a priority.

“When I took the guy down, I tried to make sure that he was pinned,” Schalles said. “I just wanted to get the match over with, and get off the mat. I always wanted to terminate the match because if I wind up 80-0 with 70 plus falls and another guy winds up 80-0 with three falls, history is going to remember me as the greatest.”

Many others took notice, including the legendary former University of Iowa wrestling coach Dan Gable, who called Schalles “the greatest pinner ever.”

Despite what turned into his otherworldly success in wrestling, things didn’t always go smoothly for Schalles. It wasn’t until his senior year of high school that he began to come into his own, and then only after shedding a lot of literal blood, sweat and tears.

Schalles credits Gary McCarthy – who is now a resident in a senior living facility in Asheville, N.C. and to whom Schalles recently paid a visit – for getting his wrestling skills into another gear.

McCarthy was the physical director of the old Hollidaysburg Area YMCA on Walnut Street and used some tough love to develop Schalles into a winner.

“Gary was the first alternate on the U.S. Olympic wrestling team, so he was pretty good,” said Schalles, who also had words of praise for his Hollidaysburg High School wrestling coaches, the late Fred Barefoot and Charlie Jackson – who was in Schalles’ corner during his PIAA championship match. “Gary worked with me between my junior and senior years of high school, and he beat the hell out of me every day, but I got tougher. When all my friends were spending time at the beach or the movies that summer, I was working with Gary, cussing and bleeding.

“Gary worked with me between the ears,” added Schalles, whose early training with McCarthy was detailed in a 1973 article in the Sports Illustrated magazine. “I learned so much from him. He convinced me that nobody could beat me, except for myself.”

And, perhaps fate.

Schalles was denied two possible berths on the United States Olympic wrestling team by an unfortunate set of circumstances.

In the finals of the 1976 Olympic trials at Brockport, N.Y., Schalles suffered fractured vertebrae in his neck and back when he landed awkwardly on his head with opponent Stan Dziedzic – who was a three-time NCAA champion at Slippery Rock – on top of him.

“I had pinned the gold and silver medal winners in Montreal that year in pre-Olympic competition in Montreal, and getting injured and defaulting in the finals was a crushing disappointment because I would have been seeded first had I won,” Schalles said. “But (stuff) happens.”

It did again in 1980, when then United States President Jimmy Carter decided to boycott the country’s involvement in the Olympics in Moscow because Russia would not comply with Carter’s request to vacate Afghanistan.

“After 1976, I hung in four more years to try to complete my dream of becoming an Olympic champion, and I was ranked number one in the world in 1980, but Jimmy Carter said that the United States was not participating in the 1980 Olympics,” Schalles said. “So, if things had turned out differently, I could have been a two-time Olympic champion in 1976 and 1980.”

As things turned out for Schalles, he did win a gold medal in freestyle competition at 163 pounds (74 kilograms) in the 1977 World Games in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Complaining about unfortunate circumstances, however, has never been in the Schalles DNA, and he honed that personal quality through his participation in wrestling.

“In wrestling, you learn to get up one more time,” Schalles said of the resilience that the sport develops in its participants. “I’ve never met a wrestler ever that drank his lunch out of a brown paper bag on a street corner.

“Whatever profession most wrestlers decide to undertake, they become the best at, because they know how to outwork and out-think others,” Schalles added. “More of the United States presidents participated in wrestling than any other sport, as did many of the astronauts. It’s a sport that teaches you persistence, grit and a never-say-die attitude, and society needs more of that these days.”