Your future, our focus
NWC Coach Wants to Relive That Feeling
BY RANDAL HOROBIK
Tribune Sports Editor
If you want to see a sparkle in Jim Zeigler's eye, just ask him to recount the 2004 wrestling season.
"That was just an incredible experience," recalled Zeigler, a 16-year coaching veteran at Northwest College. "I remember driving down from Billings and getting to the corner there in Garland and they had the fire trucks waiting for us. All the way into Powell it was just car after car of people that came out to welcome us home."
The Trappers' national championship season was one for the record books. Northwest College ran the gauntlet, going wire-to wire as the nation's top-ranked program, setting a national scoring record and putting five wrestlers in championship matches.
"There was a point in the year where we kind of knew we could win it if we just wrestled right and held it together as a team," said Zeigler.
That point actually developed early in the season. Ranked atop the NJCAA pre-season poll, Northwest looked to have an early challenge on the calendar from pre-season No. 2 Northern Idaho.
"We really eyed that as a big test," Zeigler recounted. "They're always a good program, and we looked upon that dual as a way to see where we were at."
Where they were was miles ahead of the competition. Northwest College won nine of the 10 matches that evening to deliver a 44-3 beat-down to the nation's No. 2 team.
"That win gave us focus for the year," said Zeigler. "We knew what we were capable of at that point."
In case anyone forgot, the Trappers found themselves in another one vs. two showdown that January. As the team traveled to Colby, Kan., for a dual tournament, they found themselves paired against Iowa Central, who by then had risen to assume the No. 2 spot in the polls.
The opponent may have been different, but the result stayed the same.
"We just pummeled them," Zeigler said. "It wasn't even close."
And so it went through the remainder of the season, with the Trappers winning dual after dual and tournament after tournament. The team didn't attend the national dual championships, leading some to believe that Nassau, N.Y. - the NJCAA champion at that event - might derail the Trappers' hopes at running the table.
That theory didn't survive past the first day of the national championships.
"We won all nine of our first-round matches and had the national championship wrapped up by the end of day one," Zeigler said. "I remember when we got everyone together for a team meeting that night, I congratulated them on winning the national championship, and then we just kind of talked that we still had work to do. We weren't wrestling against any other team. We were wrestling against ourselves."
The Trappers continued to pull away from the field, setting a national championship team-scoring record in the process. The team won nearly 90 percent of its matches at the national championships.
While that season was Zeigler's only national title, it was hardly his only success at Northwest College. Through the 2009 season, the Trappers' coach has directed 15 top-10 programs in his 16 seasons. Northwest has produced 71 junior college All-Americans in the sport and nine national champions. The Trappers have returned home from the national tournament with nine team trophies (given to teams finishing in the top six nationally).
"I want to give kids that experience one more time," said Zeigler. "I have a passion for coaching, and I'm not getting any younger. I want to make another run at it because that's such a learning and life-changing moment for everyone that's involved when you win a national title."