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HIGH SCHOOL WRESTLING: Trio Of Former College Athletes, Including A Pair Of Two-Time D1 All-Americans, Are Bringing Wellsboro Wrestling Back (2022-01-01)

By Lance Larcom
Northern Tier West Sports Report
WELLSBORO — It’s not uncommon for former collegiate wrestlers to give back to the sport they love after their days of competing are over by coaching at a high school or at the youth level. Not even for the highly successful ones .. say, an All-American, or even a two-time All-American. Programs would be thrilled to have one of these guys on their staff, working with their kids. What I’m betting is fairly rare, however, is if there are many programs throughout the state, or country, that can boast having TWO former Division I, two-time All-American wrestlers coaching in their high school and youth programs. Wellsboro can. 

Along with varsity Head Coach Bryce Bitner, who was a successful high school wrestler at Central Mountain and played football at Lock Haven University, the Hornets have two men that are very well known throughout the wrestling community assisting the program .. two-time All-American at Missouri, Matt Pell and Andy Rendos, a two-time All-American at Bucknell.

Pell and Rendos took different paths to end up in Northeastern Pennsylvania, each gathering the wrestling experiences and knowledge along the way that they are now instilling in their fortunate student athletes.
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Pell followed up a distinguished high school career, which included three individual Wisconsin state championships and a No. 8 national ranking while at Luxemburg-Casco High School, by choosing to wrestle at Missouri. 

A four-year starter on Missouri’s wrestling team, Pell first earned All-American honors as a sophomore in 2005 while competing at 184 pounds. The Tiger team captain became just the third Missouri wrestler in program history to earn All-American honors in more than one weight class, managing a third place finish at the 2007 Championships in the 165-pound weight class. 

In addition to earning his second top-eight NCAA finish, Pell was presented with the Gorarrian Award after recording the most pins in the least amount of time at the NCAA Championships held in St. Louis. The four-time NCAA qualifier completed his career with 122 wins, good enough for sixth best in program history.

After graduating in 2007, Pell accepted a position as an assistant coach with the University of Virginia wrestling squad. After two years on the Cavaliers’ staff, Pell returned to Mizzou and was an assistant coach with his alma mater for three seasons, and later joined Lock Haven University’s wrestling program as an assistant coach. 
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Like Pell, Andy Rendos also enjoyed a stellar high school wrestling career, winning four District championships, two Regional and two PIAA State Championships at 152 pounds for Brockway High School in western Pennsylvania. 

A 2006 high school graduate, Rendos chose to wrestle at Division I Bucknell University, where the 165-pounder qualified for the National Championships four times. 

In 2009, Rendos earned All-American status with a 5th-place finish at Nationals, then repeated the honor in 2010 with a sixth-place finish. The four-year co-captain finished with 121 wins and was honored with numerous awards within the wrestling program, as well as being named the top overall athlete in his class at Bucknell by winning the Christy Mathewson Award.

Following his graduation from Bucknell, Rendos returned to western PA and coached at Dubois High School until 2015. 
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Rendos explains well why successful wrestlers such as himself and Pell return mat side after their days of competition are over.

“The sport of wrestling had provided me with so much that it was really hard just to walk away from it entirely”, Rendos says, adding, “I felt as though my whole career would be wasted if I couldn't pass the knowledge onto another generation or help someone accomplish what I did during my competition years.”

Pell echoes Rendos’ take on the desire to pass on the valuable lessons and skills that wrestling provided him, and adds what led him to enjoying his time now at the high school level.

“I gave up coaching college wrestling so that I would be around for my kids”, Pell explains. “It is an intense job (coaching at the collegiate level), and requires a lot of time and traveling.”

While Bitner found a home in Wellsboro thanks to being hired soon after graduating from Lock Haven as a special education teacher at the high school, both Rendos and Pell settled here more because of family ties to the area. 

“In 2015 I moved to Wellsboro due to my wife getting a job at the hospital and also her having ties to the area, being from Coudersport”, Rendos explains. “Shortly after moving up here I received a job offer from C&N Bank working in the Finance Group.”

For Pell, the situation was similar, if not even a little closer to “home”.

“My wife, Melissa (Stokes), grew up in Wellsboro and her family still lives here in town, so we would come back to visit often”, Pell says. “I fell in love with the area, and always thought it would be the perfect town to raise children in, so when the opportunity to move here presented itself, we jumped on it.”

With wrestling in their blood and the desire to give back by coaching wrestling running just as deep, the timing was unfortunately not ideal, as Wellsboro, after suffering through a 1-16 Varsity season and several years of declining numbers, halted their Varsity and Junior High Wrestling programs following the 2017-18 season. 

Rendos turned the unfortunate into an opportunity, with eyes on a time that the programs could return.

“I immediately started working with the elementary program”, Rendos says, “to build up numbers and the foundation of the program.”

Pell also knows the value of developing tomorrow’s Junior High and Varsity wrestlers now.

“Changing the culture of a program starts with the youth”, Pell explains. “The athletes that we are coaching now, are buying into the program and improving daily.”
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The Varsity program participated in one tournament and one regular season match in 2020, sending just three wrestlers to the Sectional Tournament. 

But now, after a four-year hiatus, Wellsboro wrestling is back. And at his first official practice as the Head Coach, Bitner welcomed an astounding 25 Varsity wrestlers to the program. 

Even though they were all relatively “new” to the Varsity program, Bitner knew even then what his team’s strength would be built upon, and that it started, in-part, when his group was younger.

“The bond and the relationship that these student-athletes have is our team’s strength”, Bitner stated at the time. “They are an extremely close-knit group that has the desire to work hard and to succeed.”

Add to that desire not just one, but two doses of mentors with the backgrounds that Pell and Rendos offer, and Bitner knows just how unique of an experience that his wrestlers, and he as a Head Coach, are able to enjoy.

“The kids feel very fortunate and confident in having two very skilled and successful athletes in the room,” Bitner says, “which makes them feel confident in the future of the program. And personally, I truly believe that I am one of the most fortunate young coaches in the country having the two gentlemen I have coaching with me. To have two NCAA All-Americans on my staff is something I don't take for granted.”

Rendos and Pell are quick to return the gratitude, and acknowledge the partnership that evolves among a coaching staff.

“Bryce is clearly the brains behind the operation”, Rendos says,  â€œand probably none of this could have been done without him. He is able to provide a presence in the school district, which is needed for a top-tier program ..  the kind we hope to build.”

“I know Bryce, Matt and myself are continuing to learn from one another and come up with the best solution for the program”, Rendos goes on to say. “There have also been times where I wrestle around with Matt and learn so much about different techniques, just because we come from different college backgrounds. Expanding upon my wrestling knowledge has been very rewarding because then I can pass that on to our current athletes.”

One of those athletes, junior 215-pounder Joe Brown, is trying to learn as much as he can from his new coaches, and is thankful for their efforts.

“It means a lot that they are here coaching us as a brand new team”, Brown says. “It benefits us all because they know what it’s like to be on a wrestling mat .. they know what to do in the different positions that we’re put in, and it’s really great because we get to learn more complex moves than most other programs.”
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The Hornets have already gotten one monkey off their back, as they opened their season with a match at Sayre .. the last team Wellsboro had beaten in a dual meet, four years prior. 

Wellsboro won just one of the five contested matches on the night, but thanks to not having to forfeit numerous weight classes, and instead, receiving five forfeits, the Hornets came out with a 36-25 win.

Nobody in Wellsboro is expecting this team to come back from a four-year break and go undefeated in dual meets while sending a lineup full of kids to Hershey. Varsity wrestling, especially in talent-rich Pennsylvania, is not a sport that most kids can just “pick up” one day in high school and dominate from the start.

Even successful underclassmen that start out their varsity careers by winning 25-30 matches as a freshman .. that’s the result from wrestling two or three times that many matches on the youth circuit for years before. 

So, when talking to “wrestling people”, whether it be in Wellsboro or throughout the league, about the Hornets reviving their program, you’ll hear terms like “process”, “mat-time” and “numbers”.

The Hornets’ coaching staff echoes all of those sentiments when talking about the experience of basically starting up a program from scratch, while also embracing the opportunity it provides.

“Sometimes with experienced programs, wrestlers develop bad habits,” Bitner explains. “With a new program, we deliver concrete instruction with foundational wrestling techniques, and for us, it’s rewarding because we get to teach kids what we want them to learn with a clean slate.”

Rendos agrees, adding, “What we want the program to become is in our control.”

“It is going to be a process to develop the program,” Pell adds, “This is not something that happens overnight.”
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Watching Wellsboro take to the mat for a recent dual meet with Canton made two things abundantly clear, the first of which  .. one of the teams was full of kids who had been wrestling dozens of matches per season for several years, within a historically strong program.

The Hornets weren’t able to pick up an individual win that night and were blanked 69-0. Bitner, Rendos and Pell would not let the experience impede what they are building in Wellsboro.

“It gives us a chance to show these kids what improvement truly looks like”, Bitner says, “no matter if that improvement is getting a win or simply lasting a whole match.”

The other takeaway from that dual meet with Canton .. hosted in an absolutely packed Wellsboro gym and, maybe more importantly, with no empty chairs on the Wellsboro side of the mat and kids warming up during every ongoing match .. was that people are excited to see, and be a part of, what Coach Bitner and his assistants, Coach Pell and Coach Rendos, are building. 

Pell sums the entire process up perfectly, exclaiming, “It is a very exciting time to be a part of Wellsboro wrestling!”
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