Dale Waba

Waba served as a teacher, coach and administrator in Madison schools for 32 years, from 1962-94. He began his coaching career at Lincoln Elementary School, where he coached football, basketball and track and field. He continued with these same coaching duties at the Madison Junior High School and coached ninth-grade basketball. In 1969, Waba became principal of the Madison Junior High School -- a position he held for 26 years. He then volunteered to take over the junior high school wrestling program in 1979 when it was in danger of being dropped. Waba had said he always wanted to be a high school varsity basketball coach, but he took the wrestling job just to help out for one year. However, he held that position for 15 more seasons. When Waba took the job, there were just six boys who wanted to wrestle. Eventually, he encouraged 10 additional boys to give the sport a try. During the next 15 years, he had 28 to 32 boys involved in wrestling each year. His wrestlers earned a total of 6,895 victories. Waba was a coach who always stressed "you get out of this program whatever it is that you put into it." Waba was named S.D. Junior High School Wrestling Coach of the Year in 1989-90 and again in 1993-94 by the S.D. Wrestling Coaches Association. Waba said that he never asked for, nor expected, anything in return for the job he did. He said it made him happy to have been able to have the opportunity to work with athletes like Brian Appelwick, Bill Ouverson, Jordan Zens, Travis Zingmark, James Carder, Greg Petterson, Tom Bloom, Mark Martens, the Johnson and Kearin brothers, Jim Ritzman, Chris Spielmann and Chris Waba (his son), just to name a few of his many wrestlers. Waba's only hope is that in some small way, being out for wrestling has had some positive influence in their lives.