Olympia’s Collins wins 2026 CSM Boys Wrestling Coach of the Year

The question of whether wrestling is an individual or a team sport has varying answers depending on who is asked. Olympia’s boys wrestling team, however, saw both plenty of success as individuals and as a collective group, leading head coach Josh Collins to be named Clutch Sports Media’s 2026 Boys Wrestling Coach of the Year. 

Collins’ Spartans had seven Class 1A state qualifiers. One of those was his son, Connor, who won a state championship at 106 pounds, and Darian Holloway also placed fourth at 285 pounds. Olympia had seven wrestlers be named to Clutch Sports Media’s 2026 Boys Wrestling All-Area team.

The Spartans excelled as a team too, winning the Class 1A Dee-Mack Regional in order to earn a berth at the Canton Dual Team Sectional. There, Olympia defeated Petersburg PORTA to clinch its second straight Dual Team State berth. Collins’ team collected several strong tournament finishes, including winning Braidwood Reed-Custer’s Comet Classic and the Tolono Unity Invitational, placing third at Bethalto Civic Memorial’s Steve Bradley Invitational, taking fourth at the Lyle King Princeton Invitational Tournament and finishing sixth at Abe’s Rumble.

Hear from Collins about this season and his career in our interview with him below. Some answers have been minimally edited for clarity.

What have you been able to reflect on in the days since the season has ended? 

“Looking back, it was a pretty awesome season,” Collins said. “We had seven kids go individually to state and [had] two placers and then as a team, qualifying for state again for the second [straight] year was pretty awesome. You work so hard over the summer and over the year to get to that point, and to have something to show for it, it's pretty amazing. As a coach, all of us coaches are excited for next year already. We're trying to look forward to what do we do next year to even improve our season and get even better results next year? So I mean, looking forward is pretty exciting.”

Your son, Connor, and niece, Chloe, both had outstanding seasons. What was it like being able to watch them as a father and uncle?

“It's been pretty amazing, Chloe and Connor are in the same grade and they went to the same preschool together and [it’s always been ‘Are they twins?’” Collins said. “My twin brother probably has something to do with it, but it’s been awesome watching them grow. They worked out together over the years and when Connor was done with his season, he came back and helped Chloe prepare for state and he warmed her up for the state tournament. So they have a really good bond already so it's pretty awesome to watch. I was able to be in the corner with Chloe at regionals and so that was a lot of fun too.”

In your mind, what made the team so special this year?

“We got a good group of kids that really buy into the sport,” Collins said. “We got a good group of coaches. The kids just feed off of each other, they're all competitive. The group that we have is not a very big group, we probably have 19-20 kids on our team so there's not a whole lot of depth. The kids we have though, they want to be there. They want to be successful and they want to do the work to be successful. Everybody wants to be successful but not everybody wants to do the work to be there and this group of kids, they do want to. They want to buy into every part of it, the hard work, the dedication, the sacrifice to get where they want to be. Really, the main group of our team is pretty young and we're going to have some kids coming in next year and the following year after that and it's just going to keep building our program that we already have.”

What’s your coaching background? 

“I started at Olympia in the middle school, I coached in middle school for a few years and then I moved up to the high school and I was assistant coach there for a few years,” Collins said. “Then in 2011, I got the opportunity to be the head coach at Heyworth High School and I started the program there and we had several state champs and a few finalists and we got fourth place in 2019 as a team. Then I knew my son was going to be going to Olympia so in 2020, I got the opportunity to come back to Olympia so I've been back at Olympia since 2020.”

What helps keep you going?

“I'm a competitive person and I love wrestling as an athlete, but being a coach is a different kind of reward,” Collins said. “Watching a kid grow and succeed and get that reward that they put the time in is probably my motivation; just watching a kid succeed when you know they put the time in and they deserve to succeed. That's probably my biggest motivation is to just keep building these kids up to where they want to be and watch them get the rewards that they deserve.”

Aside from winning, what’s a fun memory with your players that you’ve had from this past season? 

“I really like when we go to tournaments or big duels and we stay in a hotel and all the kids get to hang out in the rooms and they're swimming or goofing around,” Collins said. “That's probably one of my favorite memories of just getting the kids together when they're not focused on wrestling and they're just focused on having fun and having that camaraderie, doing the little games and stuff they do outside of the in-depth [preparation] for wrestling. They have fun along with that definite grind of the sport.”

What’s a piece of coaching advice you’d give?

“I think one of the biggest pieces of advice that I had taken from my coach was to coach every kid the same,” Collins said. “If there's a kid that's third string, you coach him the same as you coach a state champ kid. Give every kid that attention and not one kid on a team is more important than another, all those kids are important. That's what makes a team, is everybody together and you build them up the same. That's something my coach told me and I definitely live by that.”