CONCORD — Glen Knecht worked construction until he couldn’t.
He hung drywall and for two decades he would wake up no later than 4 a.m. so he could finish a job early and make it to the Concord High School cafeteria to start mopping the mats before wrestling practice. Occasionally, he’d lose jobs with the difficult schedule.
“I’ve lost jobs before and I’ll lose ’em again, but I’ve never missed a day of practice so you better not,” he would tell his wrestlers.
Concord High’s most successful wrestling coach retired in 2011 with little fanfare, his body worn down after nearly four decades as a union drywaller. Over the last few months, the boys and girls whom he turned into men and women felt he deserved recognition — to be noticed for all the lives he’s molded. So they planned a surprise party to honor the mustached coach with a vise handshake.
On Saturday, dozens of his former wrestlers returned to the campus cafeteria to honor Knecht, who spent a career avoiding the spotlight. Many said they met coach at turning points in their young lives, where his gentle manner, honesty, faith and selflessness turned him into a father figure.
When Shawn Ramey began wrestling at Concord High in 1994, his abusive and alcoholic father showed up at one of his first matches and began berating him from the stands. He remembers Knecht escorting him out of the gym.
“It was one of the most significant moments of my life,” Ramey told the crowd, as his coach listened from a chair. “In that moment, I felt safe and secure.”
Ramey would spend more time during high school at Knecht’s house than his own. That structure led to him wrestling in the U.S. Navy and he now has a successful career in Arizona and coaches youth wrestling himself.
“My home life was (expletive). If it got bad, I would just go to coach’s house, even if he wasn’t there, I’d just spend time on his property,” Ramey said, choking up. “Having a real father in my life, I didn’t have that and he became that to me … I would be dead or in jail if not for coach.”
Knecht, 56, was given to his grandparents at age 8. He never played with toys. He’d wake up before the sun rose to do two hours of chores, feeding the animals and tending to the property, before heading off the school.
He grew up in blue-collar West Pittsburg, but transferred to Concord High School his senior year. He never wrestled for the Minutemen because he broke his scapula during football season.
Shortly after he graduated in 1977, he married his high school sweetheart Denise and the pair have been married 38 years.
In 1991, Knecht’s nephew began his freshman year at Concord High and asked his uncle to come watch his practice. He wound up becoming an assistant coach, before taking the head coach position in 1993.
“Anything good that ever came to me in this life, came from right here,” Knecht said, pointing his grizzled hand to the gym floor on his favorite campus.
He never cut anyone.
Tod Weaver had never wrestled before, but he stuck his head into the cafeteria after being cut from the basketball team and asked: “When are tryouts?”
“‘We don’t have tryouts in wrestling,’ I told him. ‘You come in here and do what I ask of you and you’re on the team,'” Knecht recalled.
Weaver turned into a decent wrestler. He recalled a match in Livermore where he faced a muscle-bound, cocky wrestler who intimidated his opponents by wearing a ski mask and a T-shirt that said: “Stand up (expletive)!”
Nervous, Weaver asked coach how he could win. Knecht told him every single time Weaver was pushed out of bounds, to sprint back to the middle. He did and won.
“It’s OK to be scared of things in life,” Weaver told the crowd filled with cauliflower ears, tears and lettermen jackets, “but go back out there to the middle and go after it.”
Knecht liked to recruit the misfits who were struggling with school or grades, his wife said.
“He’d tell the vice principal, ‘Let me have them,'” Denise said. “He knew how to handle troubled kids and he knew if they could just channel that energy into wrestling they would be hooked.
“He doesn’t realize it. He has no idea how many boys’ lives he affected.”
Despite living a modest life in Concord, he never deposited a single coaching check into his bank account. Every cent went to the wrestling team. In 2011, when he retired, he donated his last paycheck to the Mt. Diablo Unified School District, which was struggling financially at the time.
“It’s not about the money,” Knecht said. “Every one of these kids is a success story and they get to introduce me to their children and wives. That’s what I care about.”
Knecht also coached girls, even before female wrestling was formalized.
Jessica Ulloa, 22, flew in from Missouri for Saturday’s event. She wrestled for three years under Knecht and she had no college aspirations until she had a heart-to-heart with the coach that stressed education.
“Honestly, if it wasn’t for him, I feel like I wouldn’t have wound up going to college and have my dreams and aspirations I have today,” she said.
The Missouri Valley College student called Knecht in the middle of the night a few months ago and they talked for two hours, with Knecht convincing her to continue her goal of becoming a physical therapist.
Marcus Collins, 28, of Fresno, showed up with his grateful parents. His father said the coach would never know the impact he had on his son.
Collins, who wrestled and graduated in 2006, said Knecht sacrificed so much for his teams, all while supporting his family and three daughters.
“We would often joke that coach didn’t have any boys of his own,” Collins said. “He had hundreds.”
Contact Matthias Gafni at 925-952-5026. Follow him at Twitter.com/mgafni.