One of Dollamurs most loyal wrestling programs has been the team at the University of Wisconsin. They’ve recently upgraded their practice room with new mats and are excited to unveil a new competition mat once their competition season is finally able to get started. Since Coach Bono has become a part of their team in 2018, we wanted to reach out to learn a bit more about him, his coaching style, his team and to see how the recent pandemic is affecting them.

We started by getting a bit of background on Coach Bono! Regarding his own wrestling experience, he stated, “In college I was a National Champion at Iowa State, I made three World teams and was an Olympic Team alternate.” We also asked about his experience as a wrestling coach – “Coaching wise – I’ve been head wrestling coach at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, South Dakota State University and now I’m with the University of Wisconsin.”

To learn a bit more about Coach Bono’s own coaching style we asked about any traditions or rituals he and his wrestlers have on tournament and meet days. He was very clear that it’s important to him that his wrestlers are able to have their own time beforehand and that individuality is his top priority – Rather than keeping all of his athletes to a strict schedule, or even all together, on tournament days. He followed up with, “I think in today’s day and age it’s a ‘no, no’ to take away their individuality. We encourage them to express their freedom and their individuality and we also want them do that on the mat during practice and at competitions.”

The Dollamur team is a big supporter of positive thinking and having a strong team bond, so we asked Coach if they had any mantras or team mottos. The team goes by “H. E. A. – Hustle. Effort. Attitude. That’s the basis of our program. We tell our guys that aside from the results, we want to know they put up their best hustle, effort and attitude and as long as that’s the case, we’re happy.”

Coach Bono has been familiar with Dollamur and let us know that his team partnered with Dollamur back when he coached at South Dakota State. He expressed that the service and professionalism he received from Vinny Barber made it a no-brainer that he’d return to Dollamur whenever he had the chance to upgrade mats for his team!

We were curious as to how the Covid-19 pandemic was affecting Coach Bono and his players and he said that it’s really been hard for the team. They are not currently getting in any workouts as a team and their academics are all virtual as well. “We’re doing our best to keep the team as secluded as possible – many of them live together – and we’re just doing our best to stop the spread and keep their college experience as positive as possible throughout this whole thing. The unknown is the worst part – not knowing when we’ll be back to workouts or competing.”

We ended with some goals from Coach Bono - “My biggest goal right now is to make sure that each athlete somehow gets the best college athlete experience. My personal coaching goal is to make sure each kid can walk away and say the University of Wisconsin wrestling program did their best to make sure my experience was the best that it could be.”

Dollamur plans to get back with Coach Bono and some of the wrestlers once they are able to compete and are in full workouts to see how things have changed and how they’re enjoying their new practice room and brand new competition mat!