Flathead coach headed to Hall of Fame

Flathead wrestling coach Scot Davis will be inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame by the hall’s Minnesota chapter on April 20.

Davis, the all-time leader in high school varsity dual wins, said he received the most votes among this year’s nominees.

“I was really dumbfounded by that,” he said.

In over 40 years as a wrestling coach, Davis has compiled a record of 996-160-4 in high school competition, with most of those wins coming at Owatonna High School in Minn., where he won two state titles. He was named National High School Wrestling Coach of the Year in 1998 by the National High School Coaches Association and received another national coach of the year honor in 2007 from Wrestling USA Magazine.

“I do not know of another person who has so thoroughly and deeply dedicated his life to the promotion of a sport,” retired Owatonna High School principal and former athletic director Jim Herzog said. “Scot thinks wrestling every day. He is the perfect candidate for the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. I can’t imagine one more deserving of this honor.”

Davis said he’s most looking forward to the induction banquet so he can catch up with former colleagues.

“As soon as I heard about it I thought it would be a great opportunity to see some people I haven’t seen in a lot of years,” he said.

He said he’s already received numerous letters and cards from former colleagues.

Davis got his start as a coach in the early 1970s while attending Augsburg College in Minneapolis. To fulfill his field experience requirement as an education major, Davis helped out at a local junior high school where he was asked if he could coach the seventh and eighth grade team. Davis obliged, practicing with the seventh and eighth graders in the morning before classes.

“That’s when I got hooked,” he said.

He also helped coach the Bloomington amateur wrestling club and took a trip to Missoula in 1972.

After coaching stops at Turtle Mountain Community High School in Belcourt, N.D., Bird Island-Lake Lillian in Minnesota, Hutchinson High School in Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin-Superior, Davis went to Owatonna High School, where he stayed for 25 years. This year was his first at Flathead.

Davis’ work promoting the sport also factored into his hall of fame induction. He has promoted wrestling as a writer, penning a wrestling nutrition column for The Guillotine, and as an instructor, producing technique DVDs for Championship Productions.

While the National Wrestling Hall of Fame’s Minnesota chapter is responsible for his induction, Davis is working to start a Montana chapter.

“What the state chapter program has done is people in that state know the ones that are deserving, and I think it’s really helped the National Wrestling Hall of Fame,” he said. “I’ve been working on that and we’re going to have a Montana state chapter. We might bring the Montana one right here to Kalispell.”