Thankless, yet vital, job

Al Frost chuckled at the question, what exactly do the Nashua-Plainfield wrestling team’s managers do?
“Maybe a better question is what don’t they do? Seriously, they do so much behind the scenes it’s not even funny,” the veteran coach said. “They deserve a little credit. No, they deserve a ton of credit. They have a thankless job, but over the years, we’ve been really lucky here. We’ve had great managers, and this year is no exception.”
So last month during a break in the Nashua-Plainfield Invitational, Frost posed for a photo with the 2018-19 managers who include Haley Rinken, Bailey Weiss, Kylie Dietz, Keagan Betsinger and Carlee Smith.
The original plan was to have the five managers posing in the old wrestling room at the high school, but the managers had one condition before they’d allow the photographer to snap the photo.
Frost had to be in it.
“He’s the leader,” Weiss said with a laugh. “He’s our coach, too.”
In 30 years of coaching, Frost has learned plenty, including the fact that a coach doesn’t argue with his managers, because in many ways, they’re the proverbial glue that keeps a wrestling team together.
They keep the wrestling room clean – washing and disinfecting mats. They haul ice from the school to the wrestling room at the Husky Wellness Center. They tend to injuries. They tape matches. They keep the scorebook. They compile the stats. They tutor, if you will, wrestlers who aren’t paying enough attention to their academics.
And, folks, that’s just a partial list.
The rest of the story may be found in the Jan. 3 Reporter.