Newly hired Damascus High wrestling coach John Furgeson finds himself in an unfamiliar position in this his fourth coaching stop in the county.
In stints at Poolesville, Gaithersburg and Watkins Mill high schools, Furgeson inherited programs that were filled with problems, including a lack of participation, scores of inexperienced wrestlers, and a history of losing. But in all three cases, Furgeson created excitement for the sport within each community and led the programs to abrupt turnarounds, including guiding Watkins Mill to its first-ever winning season in 2006-07 (8-6 record).
In filling the vacancy left by long-time Damascus coach Dave Hopkins, Furgeson, who was selected for the job about two weeks ago, faces a different challenge. He won’t need to build anything at a program that has been among one of the best in the county, and the state, during Hopkins’s 23-year tenure at the school.
‘‘I’m very excited about it but I’ve got a lot of big shoes to fill,” Furgeson said. ‘‘It’s a different situation. We graduated a lot of seniors but the kids [coming in and returning] have wrestled before. They know what a wrestling mat looks like. It’s going to be a fun situation. They have a nice, big, huge wrestling room. I’ll try to put my stamp on the program. We’ll do a couple of things different than Coach Hopkins, but he’s a guy I’ll turn to for advice.”
It is Furgeson who could write a manual on how to resurrect a lifeless program, a talent he first displayed at Poolesville, where he guided the Class 1A Falcons to a pair of 2A-1A regional dual-meet postseason berths during his five seasons and produced a 10-4-1 record during the 2000-01 season.
He left for Gaithersburg for the 2002-03 season and after compiling a 1-12 record that year, Furgeson won a total of 15 matches his next two seasons before heading to Watkins Mill two years ago. That historic 8-6 mark two seasons ago overcame years and years of losing experienced by the program.
‘‘I think John is going to do extremely well,” said Hopkins, who compiled a 260-60-2 record that includes undefeated seasons in 1994-95 (15-0) and 1998-99 (18-0) and five one-loss seasons, while also capturing eight county championships, a combined 13 regional tournament and dual-meet crowns and a combined five state titles since starting the program in 1985. ‘‘I’ve watched him through his career and the programs he’s had, by the end of his tenure, he’s had them competitive.
‘‘He had teams that had dismal records and really worked them up to be pretty decent. I’m excited for him. We won’t lose a beat. He’s coming into a program that’s established and he’ll keep them at that level, if not get them up a little bit more than that we have the past couple of years. He’ll fit in well.”
One of Furgeson’s trade secrets is his ability to recruit football players to fill out his lineup, including the upper weights, which is something Hopkins has run up against in recent years. Furgeson will be an assistant coach on the school’s varsity football team, which captured the 3A state crown this past fall.
‘‘It was definitely tough to leave Watkins Mill,” said Furgeson, who lives in Damascus. ‘‘I had support of the AD and the principal over there but an opportunity like this comes around once in a lifetime. It’s closer to home and someday my kids will go there. I think it was time for me to try something different and try to keep the program up to the top. That’s a brand-new thing for me.”
