Lon Gerrish said he wasn’t satisfied with what he accomplished as a wrestler at Glenbrook North.
Although he won 107 matches, the 1976 graduate never captured a state championship with the Spartans.
After starting all four years at Northern Illinois, Gerrish got into coaching. At Sandwich, he won 17 conference championships, 14 regional titles and finished first four times at the Class A state dual tournament during his tenure from 1982-2002.
“My experience in high school was not as good as I wanted it to be,” the 58-year-old Gerrish said. “I fed off of that.”
In October, Gerrish was inducted into the Illinois Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame for his lifetime service to the sport. Before that, Gerrish was selected in 1994 as Man of the Year by the Illinois Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association and its Administrator of the Year in 2012. He was inducted into the IWCOA Hall of Fame in 1997.
“The success at Sandwich was outstanding,” said Gerrish, who still lives in the town.
In addition to his participation in the sport as an athlete and coach, Gerrish has been an official for the last three decades. He said he became an official to keep up with the rules while he was coaching.
“There’s nothing worse than a coach who doesn’t know the rules,” he said.
Trevor Elliott, a 1992 graduate of Sandwich, said he wanted to wrestle for Gerrish even before he got to high school. Elliott won three Class A state championships at 119 pounds with the Indians and collected 166 victories in four varsity seasons.
“The way he coached, it was never about him,” said Elliott, who was part of the IWCOA Hall of Fame’s Class of 2007. “He pushed everybody, no matter what level they were at. He could motivate anybody. People wanted to win for him.”
Elliott, who went on to wrestle at Indiana, said he remains in regular contact with Gerrish and attended the Oct. 18 induction ceremony at the Holiday Inn in Countryside.
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Inspired, in part, by Gerrish, Elliott now is a high school wrestling coach at Cape Coral (Fla.). This is his 11th season with the Seahawks.
“He was like a second father to me,” Elliott said. “I want to emulate what he was doing. I try to remember the things he did for us in high school.”
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