Five years ago, the outlook for the Terrapin wrestling team looked bleak. The team’s performance the previous season left much to be desired, and the newly appointed head coach for the 2003-2004 season, Tom Miller, previously assistant coach for six years, resigned after just five months on the job.

The struggling program set its sights on Bethlehem, Pa., the home of Lehigh University, where head coach Greg Strobel and assistant coach Pat Santoro had turned around a similarly struggling program and brought them into the national spotlight. The Mountain Hawks had finished the previous season ranked No. 4 in the nation.

The Terps hired Santoro in the hopes that he would be able to repeat the success he and Strobel found at Lehigh.

So far, so good, for both Santoro and the Terps. The Terps went from 4-9 in his first season as coach to 17-5 last year, tieing a school record for wins in a season. Santoro credited his nine years as an assistant at Lehigh for giving him the experience to be head coach.

“There are a lot of similarities between my experiences at Maryland and Lehigh,” Santoro said. “When Greg and I got to Lehigh, they had something like eight losing seasons in a row. We had to rebuild from the ground up, just like I had to do here, so we could make it a great program again.”

Lehigh went from losing records to finishing in the top-10 three of Santoro’s last four seasons with the team. In 2003, his last season with the Mountain Hawks, he was named the national Assistant Coach of the Year and Strobel was named Head Coach of the Year for the Mountain Hawks.

Similarly, the Terps prospects have risen since his tenure began in the fall of 2003. In 2006, the Terps won a share of the ACC dual meet championship, and last season the Terps finished undefeated in the ACC and shared the dual championship for the conference for the first time since 1974.

The Terps also perform well off the mat. Six wrestlers Santoro coached in the past two years have been members of the All-ACC Academic team, and two of the past three seasons, the Terps have won the ACC Sportsmanship award.

Santoro’s success came up against a measuring stick Sunday against Lehigh. The Terps wanted to show their No. 24 ranking was anything but a fluke.

Facing a school he coached for so long and still knows well might have been hard. But Santoro did his best to ensure it was just another day at the office.

“Honestly, I try not to think who we’re wrestling,” Santoro said. “I know so many coaches, Greg especially, so I need to stay focused.”

Santoro’s cool head led the Terps to a dominant 25-9 win. He showed his players it was just like any other match, and to win they needed to stay focused and work hard.

“The bottom line is, it’s about the kids, not me,” Santoro said. “If I’m not focused, they’re not focused. I’m trying to get the guys to focus on hard work and the fundamentals. If they win, I’m happy, and if they don’t, it means I didn’t prepare them enough.”

The victory, if nothing else, helped show the Terps deserve their spot in the top 25 in the country. The young team showed against a very similar Lehigh squad that it could neutralize an explosive, if erratic, attack.

“It’s good to get a quality win like that, especially against a good team like Lehigh,” Santoro said.

But he will not allow himself even a day to savor his victory against his former team.

“We still have a lot of team to go,” Santoro said. “We’ve got a lot of potential, but so do a lot of other teams. We’ve got a long way to go.”

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