Gene Doyle

2012 Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame Inductee

November 30, 1940 – January 14, 2018

Paths to success vary with every individual. Gene Doyle’s path to wrestling success involved coaching only, as he never wrestled competitively in high school or college.

“I was fortunate. My first mentor was Bill ‘Beets’ Dotson at Dubuque Senior High,” Doyle recalled after being hired as a teacher and football coach. “My second was Keith Young. I was an assistant coach at Cedar Falls for 11 years. The techniques and style of their wrestling have held up over the years,” a humble Doyle explained.

Doyle recalled that the first two years after taking over at Cedar Falls from Young, the squads struggled. “We were a bit down at the time.

My sons and I started coaching the kids’ program and got the high school athletes to take pride in being in the program… we made it ‘the thing to do,’” Doyle stated.

Success followed with Doyle serving as the head coach at Cedar Falls from 1985 to 2000. During his tenure, his teams won state team titles in 1993, 1997, and 1998, while also claiming a dual meet title in 1993. His dual meet teams went 251-52 and also placed second, third, and fourth in state dual meet competition.

Doyle described himself as an organizer and motivator who worked to get his wrestlers to use techniques he observed in college programs. “I tried to copy the things Chuck Patten, Don Briggs, and Jim Miller were doing in their programs. I wanted our wrestlers to be pretty aggressive,” Doyle stated.

Those wrestlers flourished under his guidance as Cedar Falls racked up ten individual state championships. The Tigers also had 43 state place finishers during those 15 years, with the teams winning five district titles, five Mississippi Valley Division championships, three Mississippi Conference tournament titles, and two Big Eight Conference titles.

Doyle stressed that administrative support was another key to having a successful program. “I was able to hire who I wanted,” Doyle said, noting that most of his assistants were former college wrestlers who were not teachers.

“I was able to talk Rich Engel out of retirement. Then I had Keith Carman, Ken Gallagher, Jeff Gard, Mark Olmstead, Jay Llewellyn, and Greg Halsor all come in at some point in time. They all loved wrestling and transmitted that desire to the student wrestlers.”

Noting that he had coached wrestling for over 30 years, Doyle retired from the sport in 2000, believing the squads for the next couple of years would remain strong.

Individual coaching honors are numerous (see additional copy), but Doyle was named State Coach of the Year twice and Coach of the Year by the National Wrestling Coaches Association in 1997.

Doyle was inducted into the Iowa Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2012, along with Marv Reiland, Bob Buzzard, and Mark Sindlinger.