Kelly Wilson returns to MHS as head wrestling coach

Morgan native and 1983 MHS graduate, Kelly Wilson, has been named as the new Morgan High Wrestling coach, filling the vacancy left when Dustin Rock stepped down in early March.  Wilson, who returns for his second stint as the head wrestling coach, brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the position.

“I’m excited to be the head coach,” Wilson commented in an interview.  “It will be hard to do what Dustin did and take second at state like he did the past two years, but I know we have a good nucleus of wrestlers coming back.  We will be there with the rest of the teams.”

The Trojans graduated a big group of seniors from this year’s team including three state finalists.  “Every year it’s hard losing the seniors, and we lost a lot of strong upper weights to graduation this year.  We’ll be out there finding new kids to fill their positions,” Wilson shared.

Wilson has been a part of Morgan wrestling for as long as he can remember.  In 1962, his dad Bob Wilson, coached Morgan to their only wrestling state championship.  Wilson, along with his brother Kyle, wrestled at Morgan High for four years. 

Early in their marriage, Wilson and his wife, Leisa, lived in Cedar City, and he started the Little League wrestling program there with six athletes.  Under his tutelage, the program expanded to over 200+ young athletes who Wilson taught to love wrestling.

In 1999, the Wilsons moved back to Morgan with their three children, Hailey, Whitney and Joshua. Joshua wrestled at Morgan High and won two state championships in 2005 and 2006 before moving on to wrestle collegiately at Utah Valley University.   In 2011 Wilson served as the head coach for the team during a transition period, and he helped start the Morgan Little League Wrestling  program. It has grown for the past 12 years into a great feeder program for the high school and helped develop wrestlers. In 2012, Wilson served as an assistant coach to Cody Payne.  

Now in 2023, Wilson steps into the role of head coach once more and plans to help his wrestlers experience wrestling and everything they can learn from it.  “I’m not focused on wins and losses.  I want to help develop young men.  Sportsmanship is not an option.  It’s an expectation.  In my book, good sportsmanship is huge. As a wrestler you need to represent the name on your back and the name of your school well.”

Wilson looks to continue the great success and traditions at Morgan while pushing to elevate the program even more.  For assistant coaches, he’s bringing back Jarret Jorgensen and Chris Payne who were both assistants under Dustin Rock and adding Russ Campbell, an All-American wrestler from Utah State.

“It will be good to have a lot of coaches,” Wilson explained. “This gives kids a chance to learn from other people.  Sometimes a kid will connect with one coach, and not another.  I feel like it’s good to give kids a lot of options and viewpoints in their coaches.”

He continued “I’m old school, and I’m excited to have these young guys [Payne and Jorgensen] on staff to help me adapt my coaching style to the mentality of the kids today.  When we were younger, we did what the coach told us to do because we were told to do it.  Today’s kids want to know why. They want to see what the benefit will be for them before they do things. I hope to show them the benefits of our program, so they will want to work hard and excel.”

“I’m good at making practice tough, and I’m relying on my younger coaches to help make it fun,” he concluded.

“As a program we have so many assets.  We have parents who are always asking how they can help.  We have dads who step up and help with Little League.  We are very blessed by the support we get from the staff.”

One of the challenges he sees in the program will be recruiting new multisport athletes to bolster the size of the team.  “We need more good athletes out and in the wrestling room during wrestling season!”

Wilson will host a wrestling camp for wrestlers June 21-23.  It will feature Morgan graduate and North Dakota State Division 1 Wrestler Owen Pentz, a 2x NCAA qualifier.  Also  featured will be  Division I All-American Brock Hardy, a four-time Utah State Champion from Box Elder High School, who wrestles for Nebraska and took 5th in the NCAA Championships this year as a freshman.  Hardy also just qualified for the U23 World Cup team.   Wilson’s son, Josh, will also be joining as a clinician.  

Wilson is excited to coach again at Morgan.  In March 2021, he retired after 34 years at UPS.  He loves to spend time with his family, especially his grandkids.  As an extremely proud grandpa, he related several stories about his nine grandkids, six boys and three girls. λ