An NCAA Champion in Glasgow

Derek St. John was born in Parnell, Iowa to Trent and Laurie St. John. He graduated from Iowa City West High School in 2009, where he posted a career record of 182-9 on the mat and won two state championships. After high school, St. John enrolled at the University of Iowa on a wrestling scholarship. Following a redshirt year, he compiled a 106-17 line over the next four seasons, winning one Big Ten title (2011-12) and one NCAA Championship (2012-13, 157 lb-class), never finishing outside the top five in either competition during his four active seasons, en route to becoming the eighteenth four-time All-American in Hawkeye history. St. John chatted with the Courier during a midday break at Scotties Wrestling Camp, where he served as the head instructor.

Q: How did you and coach Casterline connect?

A: I’ve been doing camps down in Billings the last couple years — that’s kind of how I met Jory — that was two years ago, and he asked me to come to his camp up here this year.

Q: How are things going thus far?

A: It’s good. Glasgow reminds me of where I grew up, a town of about 2,500 people in Iowa.

Q: What is your current focus, having finished your NCAA career?

A: I’ve been coaching down at North Dakota State for the past year; I’m going on my second year. Just continuing to build my coaching career and whatnot — that’s the big focus at this point.

Q: Do you continue to train?

A: I competed at the US Open and the World Team Trials this past year and placed fifth in both of those. But yeah, I still plan on competing. [It’s the] Olympic year coming up.

Q: What’s your routine? All wrestling, or do you mix in weights and running at all?

A: I lift weights two, three times a week. Wrestling’s the majority of it; drills in the morning, hard wrestling in the afternoon four or five times a week. Then you’ve got competitions on the weekends a lot of times. That’s the main routine.

Q: Is that what you’ve been running these guys through [at the camp]?

A: Kind of — not so much the weights, just a lot of technique and the live wrestling in the afternoon sessions.

Q: Looks like a good turnout.

A: Yeah I think we’ve got about 55 kids. For a small community that’s a good number . . . pretty impressive.

Q: Do you see any potential recruits?

A: These guys are pretty young. Maybe in a couple years we’ll have some. Hopefully coming up soon.

Q: Did you wrestle exclusively as a kid?

A: No, I didn’t just wrestle until my last two years of high school. I played baseball, I played football. I even did a little bit of soccer early on, too. My three sports were football, baseball, wrestling.

Q: What put you over the edge? How’d you figure out wrestling was for you?

A: I wasn’t quite big enough to play football at the next level, and baseball I lost interest in a little bit. I started wrestling more Greco-Roman in the summers, freestyle. And I had a lot of success in wrestling, that was probably the biggest thing for me.

Q: Wrestling is a sport which is not as readily available to watch on television. How were you, and how are aspiring wrestlers now, able to connect to the sport in this way? Is there anyone from other more widely-broadcast sports who you looked up to?

A: Well, the NCAA Division I tournament is on ESPNU. FloWrestling is a big one if you want to get on there and watch it, they’ve got a ton of stuff, they host live events. But yeah, it doesn’t have the publicity of the NFL or college football or college basketball. It’s grown quite a bit in the past couple years. It’ll probably never make big headlines like football, but . . .

Q: Do you see any crossover between wrestling and, say, MMA?

A: Definitely. There are a lot of good wrestlers who have strong careers then make the switch over. Wrestling kind of rules the roost in that, there’s a huge similarity there. A lot of differences, too, but being mat-savvy helps a lot, I think.

Q: Have you ever given thought to a transition?

A: No (laughing). I like to think I’m too pretty for that; I want to keep my face the way it is.

Q: Nice meeting you, and good luck.

A: You bet.