Robbinsville wrestling coach stepping down after historic career
Robbinsville – “How did you know when it was time for you to retire from coaching? Coach Bob Colvin and coach Bruce Snyder both answered with exactly the same reply: ‘You just know.’
“So why retire or why retire now? I just know.”
Thus ended the letter that officially announced the retirement of Todd Odom as Robbinsville’s head wrestling coach, signaling the conclusion of a career that has seen the leader of “The Ville” compile 374 wins and guide 93 state qualifiers, 43 state placers and 21 state champions.
There is no way to summarize the impact Odom has left on the sport, but it is hard to argue that he leaves what can only be described as a coaching dynasty – by everyone except Odom, that is.
“It’s bittersweet, because it’s been a big part of my life,” Odom said Monday during an exclusive interview with The Graham Star. “I’ve made peace with it, but people reaching out and saying very, very nice things about me is very humbling. But it’s time for me to let these young guys take the reins and exceed the marks – and I hope they do, 100 times.
“Now that it’s over, I’m happy. I’m super proud of what ‘The Ville’ has become. It’s produced 11 state champs in the last two years. We want to represent our community the best way that we can, and I feel like we have.”
‘Owed a debt’
It was Saturday, Oct. 14, 1989.
Just 15 and a sophomore at Robbinsville High School, Odom had just came off the gridiron the night before – a victory over Smoky Mountain Conference foe Swain County. At the time, Odom was a two-sport athlete, but wrestling was not his other love: it was track.
“Wrestling wasn’t even on my radar,” Odom recalled.
Less than 24 hours after the Swain County clash, Odom was enjoying a Saturday afternoon with friends at Graham County’s former skating rink.
“I should’ve listened to my mom and dad: they told me not to leave the skating rink,” Odom said. “I went against what they told me to do.”
Instead, Odom loaded onto the back of a motorcycle and did what teenagers often do: fulfilled the need for speed.
Admittedly, the machine was running around 120 mph when it failed to properly navigate a curve near Pin Hook Road on N.C. 143. The crash pinned Odom’s left leg underneath the motorcycle, severing the limb from the knee down.
Odom was airlifted to UT Medical Center in Knoxville, Tenn., but his life was forever changed.
“They gave me the option of reconnecting it,” Odom said. “With the technology and everything they have now, they probably could have salvaged it and I could’ve lived a normal life.
“But back then, it was so shattered and splintered, that it was going to be a couple of inches shorter, they didn’t know if it would take … there were so many variables. When you’re 15 years old, that’s a pretty hard decision to make: whether you’re going to be an amputee or not.”
The only concern Odom had was resuming his athletic pursuits. After a 10-day stay at the hospital, he returned home and later put his crutches down Christmas Day in 1989. In July, he resumed football practice.
However, somewhere deep down inside, a bitterness lingered.
“For a long time, I blamed the guy that was driving and I shouldn’t have,” Odom said. “Somebody makes a bad decision and it can go away, with time. I’m reminded of it every time I wake up in the morning.
“When something as drastic as having your leg amputated happens when you’re 15, you start questioning things. I’d made a lot of good decisions, but one bad decision caused me to have to live with something the rest of my life. That one bad decision led to other bad decisions and it was just compounding. The people I started surrounding myself with was going to take me down the wrong road.”
That was, until he was simply walking down the hallway one day. Suddenly, Odom was plucked into the teacher’s lounge after his junior year of football ended in 1990.
Trammell trials
Standing inside the lounge was Ritchie Trammell, the then-head coach of the Black Knights’ wrestling team. With a Robbinsville career record of 98-18, Trammell would go on to wrestle at the University of North Carolina, before returning to coach the Knights through 1992, then again for another stint from 1993-96.
“He asked me how much I weighed and I told him 185, 190,” Odom said. “He said, ‘Perfect. Be at practice.’”
Odom reported for duty, and Trammell immediately paired him with Lynn Hooper – Robbinsville’s first-ever state wrestling champion, crowned in 1989 – and Arnold Johnson, a state placer in 1990.
“Pound-for-pound, that’s two of the toughest guys that’s ever come through this part of the world,” Odom said. “They beat on me. It sounds unfair and cruel – but truthfully, they were beating the sense into me. Lessons and logic.”
Odom’s biggest career win came against a three-time state finalist during his senior year. The victory is commemorated with a photo in his office.
“I had a lot of success on the mat, but I didn’t play football my senior year,” Odom said. “I quit on a Thursday night, and Saturday at 7 a.m., my phone is ringing and it’s coach Trammell. He said he needed some help at the gym, so I went down. He had me unroll a mat, and then I turned around and a pair of (wrestling) shoes were in my face.
“He basically told me I wasn’t going to waste the next 3-4 months laying around at the house. So for the next 12 Saturdays, he worked out with me and me only. He didn’t give me an option.
“Since 1990, there has not been a span of more than two weeks where coach Trammell hasn’t called me. I owe a lot to him.”
Unfortunately, a bout with mononucleosis robbed Odom of finishing out his senior year as a Robbinsville wrestler. It left yet another void that would have to be filled.
In due time.
“I always felt like I owed the sport a debt. It did save me,” Odom said. “It did put my life on a different path. It gave me the opportunity to impact lives, like my coach impacted me. Because of that, I’ve chased that feeling of contentment for 21 years, where I felt like I had a mortgage on wrestling and I kept paying it, because I owed it.
“My mom always taught me to pay all my bills, but in the last two months, I’ve realized I’ve paid it off.”
Call to coach
Aspiring to be a lawyer, Odom enrolled at Western Carolina University. Both of his parents did not complete high school, so Odom was a first-generation college student.
Occasionally, he would pop in and help Trammell at practice. But he ended up settling on a degree in history, but was working for Phillips & Jordan the Monday after graduation, which did not set well with his father Jim, who spent 42 years as a boilermaker for Chicago Bridge, which most notably built the Gateway Arch.
“He was so proud of me Saturday, but he was mad at me Monday because I was working on a bulldozer,” Odom said. “My dad raised me to work, but he told me that he didn’t send me to college to run a bulldozer. That always stuck with me.”
But another life lesson from his dad also lingered.
“He said, ‘If you can close your eyes and imagine exactly what you’re doing right now for the next 30 years, you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. But if you have any hesitation, get out. You’re not going to be happy,’” Odom said. “I still had that itch to coach.”
3 strikes, you’re out
Even without a teaching certificate, Odom was courted in three separate instances for jobs at Robbinsville, only to be rejected after each application.
“I found out I could get my teaching certificate in nine months, so I turned in my notice (at Phillips & Jordan),” Odom said. “I took my dad’s advice. I was going to be a teacher and I was going to do everything I could to get off the road.”
Odom regretted missing his son – Logan – taking his first steps and speaking his first words, so he vowed to be home to watch his children grow up.
After nine months of washing cars – and pursuing his teacher’s certificate – Odom was finally ready to re-enter the coaching world. He soon found himself sitting in his former history professor’s office.
It was the summer of 2001. Dr. Max Williams was speaking with his former pupil just moments after Odom had paid a visit to Smoky Mountain High School in Sylva and met Si Simmons, then the athletic director, who informed Odom there were no openings for just coaches.
Odom had caught an ad in The Sylva Herald that advertised for a head wrestling coach job with the Mustangs, so he knew something was available; he just needed an in.
Williams heard Odom’s plight and immediately rang up then-Smoky Mountain High School principal Kenny Nicholson. After a brief conversation, Nicholson agreed to meet with Odom in-between the “A” and “B” building.
At the end of the meeting, Odom’s career was set in stone.
“We sit down and talk. He tells me, ‘Todd, I’ve been in education for 30 years and I’ve known Max Williams for 30 years. He’s never given me a phone call to tell me I need to hire somebody,’ “ Odom recounted. “He asked me how good I was at teaching math, and I told him I was excellent at teaching math.
“I hadn’t taken a math class since my sophomore year in high school.”
Baptism by fire
Odom was thrown right into the mix: being named as Smoky Mountain’s head junior varsity football, varsity wrestling, and boys and girls track coach quickly satisfied the hunger he had long craved.
“It was the best year of my life. What a great year,” Odom fondly recalled. “We were awful at football, but we had a great time. The wrestling team was really good and some of my track kids had a successful year, so it was a great time.”
Odom admits that he would have retired from Smoky Mountain, but after again initially turning down a role at Robbinsville during the summer of 2002, his father took a bad fall and needed constant care.
Soon, Odom found himself at his alma mater. He was teaching at Robbinsville. He was an assistant football coach – later the head junior-varsity coach – and most importantly, on the wrestling staff, albeit at the helm of a four-person middle-school roster.
Numbers don’t lie
Finally assigned to head up the Knights’ varsity wrestling team in 2004, Odom began doing what he believes his successor will do: building a legacy.
The rest, they say, is history.
“When I took over, I only had one kid that really had any varsity experience and those four middle-school kids that I’d coached,” Odom said. “Three of them were freshmen. It was tough. We were a rag-tag crew.”
His first state placer was Chandler Turpin, who finished second in the 215-pound division in 2008. Erik Messick would later place third in the 103-pound bracket at that same tournament.
The retirement came after four 1A Western Regional championships, a 115-4 record in the Smoky Mountain Conference, a whopping 16 distinctions as the league’s Coach of the Year – including 10 in a row at one juncture – and two recognitions as the state’s 1A Coach of the Year
Robbinsville won it all in 2017: the N.C. High School Athletic Association’s 1A dual-team championship. The Knights have reached the finals on two other occasions.
“A lot of them were good, hard-nosed kids that just loved to wrestle,” Odom said of the 2017 state champions. “A lot of them came through the kids program, and they had always been really good.
“To win a state title involves a lot of luck, or it’s matchups. I’ve coached teams that were much more talented than that team. It’s no disrespect to any team I’ve ever coached, but this year’s team dual team is the best one I’ve ever coached … but they didn’t win it. Somebody had to be first, so that state title validated years of hard work and volunteering.
“If you want to call yourself a ‘championship program,’ you’ve got to win a championship to do that.”
Future plans
Odom and his wife, Susan Crowe, have four seniors in high school between them: twins Aynsley and Kyle Fink, Ivy Odom and an adopted son, Jayden Nowell. Ivy served as the team’s manager – and gained significant recognition for her beloved livestream commentary in the process – while both Finks and Nowell share a combined six state titles between them.
So with their departures from the program imminent, the timing could not have been more perfect for Odom to ride off into the sunset. And unlike some who may feel a need to hang around, Odom insists that will not be the case with him.
Sure, he will still come and watch.
But it’s time to step away.
“In my mind, I wanted to coach 20 years. That was my goal,” Odom said. “Every year is a blur, but when every one of my kids became involved, it was natural for me to (want to) see the end of that.
Preparation for retirement might have started prematurely in Odom’s mind, he admits.
Subconsciously, Odom started ensuring records, banners and shadow boxes adorned the walls of Robbinsville’s wrestling facility a few years ago, instilling the values and what is expected of anyone who dons a Black Knights singlet in the years to come.
“When I started looking at all that and what was coming up, I would have coached for selfish reasons,” Odom analyzed. “Kage Williams has a great opportunity to be a four-time state champion. Selfishly, I would like to coach that, but would I be coaching for the right reasons? My career record is 374 wins; if I coached one more year, I could break 400. But that’s selfish. I applied the Jim Odom test: can I see myself doing this again?
“It’s never been about me; it’s been about the sport.”