Throughout the year, the Southern Conference is featuring former student-athletes from around the league in a series called Where Are They Now. This will be an opportunity to get reacquainted with the student-athletes after their competition days have come to an end. The question and answer session focuses on a former student-athlete who has gone on to excel away from the field, course, mat or court.
Our next Where Are They Now feature focuses on former Chattanooga wrestler, Heath Eslinger, who was named the 2000 Southern Conference Wrestler of the Year and was named the SoCon Tournament’s Most Outstanding Wrestler the same year. During his senior year, Eslinger also climbed as high as No.6 in the nation.
Eslinger was named the 11th head coach of the Chattanooga wrestling program in July 2009.
Heath Eslinger
Chattanooga Wrestling (1995-2000)—Exercise Science
Current Profession: head wrestling coach at Chattanooga
How did you end up at Chattanooga?
I graduated high school in 1995 and at that point there were more Division I teams and the state of Tennessee as a whole wasn’t that tough. Chattanooga, The Citadel and a few other Southern Conference schools were the only ones who recruited me. Chattanooga just seemed to be the best fit for me at that time of my life. I felt like I was growing in some areas where I felt like I struggled in previously and it ended up being a real growth experience for me in several ways. Obviously, I had a little bit of success there so it was good for me as an athlete as well, competitively, spiritually and emotionally to grow myself up and get ready for the next phase of my life.
You were named a captain of the wrestling team for four years. Can you talk a little bit about your leadership, and how being a student-athlete helped develop those leadership skills?
I think anytime you’re in a student-athlete role you have the opportunity to become a leader. I don’t know if we always accept that or always utilize that to the best of our abilities. I think the five years that I had there allowed me to grow in those areas and allowed me to lead some people, not just in wrestling, but through on campus activities, academics and through my major. I like to consider myself a well-rounded person and I still have some great friends who I met through the department where I was a student. For me it was great to grow not just as an athlete, because that was a given but to grow in those other areas so that I was prepared when I got done.
Can you talk about your involvement with FCA?
While at Chattanooga I was involved with several organizations, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Campus Crusade for Christ and I do think those two organizations were the most deserving of my success because they kind of helped point me in the right direction and keep me on track in a phase in life where most people think you steer down the wrong road. I’ve tried to get back in those areas and to this day our athletes are very involved with FCA. I’ve incorporated a Tuesday bible study into our practice time because I do feel like that is one of those areas we need to expose them to. So as they graduate and go on, and they’re sitting in this spot, doing something great for our conference or for our school, that they’ll look back on those opportunities. That is what shaped my life, as a husband, a dad or a worker.
Can you talk about how the Student-Athlete Leadership Institute (SALI) helps the schools and the conference?
I think I was the second or third group to go through SALI at Black Mountain my senior year and got to back last year, now as a faculty representative versus a student-athlete. I think the main thing that it brings to the table is it allows other students to see that there are other students out there who are trying to do the right thing and it gives you an appreciation for people on other campuses. We live in a culture that lives on rivalry, almost envy. I think rivalry is healthy and sometimes I don’t think envy is so healthy. So I think it allows students to appreciate students from other institutions and gives them the chance to say ‘hey, we’re all working hard and we’re all trying to do the right things, and when match time comes or game time comes, lets compete as hard as we can,’ but at the end of the day there’s a mutual respect for each other. I think one of the greatest qualities of leadership is you have respect for all people. So I think the thing it brings the most is that it allows them to see that there should be a mutual respect among their peers that will help them even in their competiveness.
It’s great to see two guys that normally would be battling head-to-head, in a game of dodge ball on the same team and now all of a sudden they are best buddies. I think the great thing about sports is when you put two people on the same team with a certain goal you’re pretty unified. At the end of the day, the games that we play will end at some point and maybe we’ll be on a work force together or living in the same community together. I think SALI and the conference allows you to build relationships and grow in that area.
Can you talk a little bit about how being a student-athlete helped you after college?
For me I think, being a student-athlete has helped me appreciate the relationships that I do have. It’s not about what you know, it’s who you know. I would take that a step further, and it’s about whom you know and what they know about you. I believe that I’m at Chattanooga right now because being a student-athlete helped shape me in that direction. There are some alarming statistics out there that say the longer a kid is in sports, the less likely he is to make a good moral decision. For me as a coach, it’s very alarming that we take something like sports and it’s causing negative effects on who a person is. For me, my athletic journey was very positive and I believed it helped shape me in the right direction and now I’m here giving back, hoping my influence will help shape men’s lives in a positive direction as well.
Can you talk a little bit about your journey after you graduated from Chattanooga?
When I graduated from Chattanooga I thought I had the next 25 to 30 years of my life mapped out. I thought I would be at my alma mater high school coaching for the next 30 years and that’s where I’d start. Obviously there was a different plan for me. I try to teach our athletes, if you do the right thing today then you’ll end up at the next right place tomorrow. And if you do that for a week, you’ll end up at the right place for the next month, the next year and the next decade. I look back on my journey and the places that I’ve been and see how it kind of pointed to me three years ago becoming the head coach here at Chattanooga. I’m thankful for each stop that I had in my preparation. I went from a high school assistant to working with Terry Brands, who is just a fanatic, to being a youth pastor at a church.Each of those phases taught me about leadership and taught me about serving, and I think it really prepared me for the task at hand right now. Fortunately, I have great people surrounding me and they’re making me look pretty successful.
You picked up many honors during your time as a student-athlete at Chattanooga. You were also named coach of the year. How does that make you feel to have earned honors during your time as a student-athlete and while being a coach?
As a student-athlete it’s fun to win, you’re investing in that time as an individual. I think it’s the pressure you put on yourself. You also have that individual responsibility that you’re in complete control of. Being a coach, now you take a corporate group of individuals and now you’re trying to get them all moving in the right direction. I think the coaching aspect of it is a little more rewarding and not just the Southern Conference titles or dual championships and things like that, but I think seeing where our team has come socially and even academically. When I got here I said, ‘we are going to lay the foundation right. I don’t care if we don’t get results five years, seven years, ten years, but when we do get them they’re going to remain because we are going to do things the right way.’ I’m proud of what the team has done academically and socially even more so than winning the conference title or winning me coach of the year, because I didn’t have anything to do with that, that was them.
Since you’ve taken over the Chattanooga wrestling program, you’ve had your team involved in several different community organizations. How do you think that helps your team?
One of the things we try and focus on is being selfless. When you have a group of 30 guys and there is one common goal, if everyone is not on the same page, it is kind of splintered. Through the community service and the attitude we are trying to teach I think it helps us harvest that selfless mentality.Saying it’s not about one individual, it’s not about me as a coach; it’s about our school, our athletic department, our program and it’s about something bigger in life; it’s about the journey that we’re on. So I do think that each of those thing that we do to give back in the community help us and are teachable moments to try and get across that attitude of selflessness to our athletes. It’s hard to tell them to be that way if we don’t ever demonstrate those things on a daily basis. It’s tough and a lot of people say there isn’t enough time, but you make the time and we’ve chosen to make the time. My assistant coach, coach Mansueto has done a great job of organizing those events and I feel like we’ve benefitted from that even in a competitive standpoint.
What is the overall feeling for you to coach at your alma mater and give back to it?
I think anytime you see an investment that was made in you, it’s nice to give back to that institution and those people and to the community. I never really had the desire to be a Division I head coach, I was completely content where I was, but an opportunity presented itself. This was probably the one opportunity that I would even consider because of what it provided to me. So to be back here in the community is a great feeling for me to maybe do something that I thought we could do that maybe we haven’t done yet as a wrestling program and to be a part of an athletic department that I think is doing great things right now. Rick Hart, our athletic director is phenomenal and to be under his leadership and share the same vision he has for our student-athletes is a lot of fun. College athletics is also a great place to raise your family. It’s busy but at the same time that business is a choice and you can choose to let them be a part of it or not and we choose fully to let our family be a part of everything that is going on here. It’s great to be back in Chattanooga and leading this program and I’m excited about what the future holds.
What are your long term goals with the program?
Obviously we’ve never had a national champ at Chattanooga, so one of our competitive goals is that we’d have a national champ. I think that’s secondary to being the number one team in the country academically. That was one of my goals when I got here, that we’d win that national championship and we’d consistently have more than half of our starting line-up be academic All-American, I think we can accomplish that this year. I don’t think we necessarily set individual goals, but we have a directional goal. I read a book called The Principle of the Path and the whole principle is direction determines destination and if this is where you want to go then you better be headed that way. If you want to go north, you better not get on the interstate and go south because you’re not going to get there no matter how bad you want to. So I think our team is understanding that whole directional philosophy of let’s just continue to move in this direction step-by-step and day-by-day and we’ll get there. We’ll get knocked back every now and then but we will get back up and keep moving. I think at the end of the day, what we want noticed as they walk across our graduation stage, is when they are a Chattanooga wrestler, they are different. They understand how to give back; they understand what it means to be a person in the community and bring value. Our goal is seeing people built, while they are spending time with us.
What advice would you give current student-athletes?
I think consistency is the key. You know, I’m reading a book right now because our AD encourages us to do so and got it for us, it’s called The Slide Edge. One of the things it talks about is the little things are so easy to do, but they’re equally as easy not to do. I think to be a great student-athlete, to be a great coach, to be a great husband, to be a great father is you have to be willing to do the little things and you have to be willing to do those little things over time. Sometimes those little things are very difficult to do and each of us have areas that we’re better at doing, but to identify just what the things that are you need to be doing on a consistent day-in and day-out basis, and not expect results immediately. I know that I may not see it in a week, but I may see it in a month, or six months, or a year, or in a career. I think that’s the hard part, seeing that short term decision can have long term effects when made over time. I tell our guys all the time, maturity is knowing that a decisions now can have a positive effect later versus just making every decision flippantly in the moment. So I would say be consistent. Be consistent academically, socially be consistent, competitively be consistent and at the end of the day you’re going to look back at your career and be very satisfied with the journey you’ve been on.