Rutgers wrestling program legend Anthony Ashnault is having 'lots of fun' in 1st season as coach at Princeton
Anthony Ashnault always wanted to be a coach once his wrestling career ended. Now the current assistant coach at Princeton, Ashnault is enjoying his first season with the Tigers after a highly decorated collegiate campaign at Rutgers.
“It’s been really great,” he said on his time at Princeton so far. “The guys on the team responded really well to having me as a new coach and they welcomed me, it was a really warm welcome and they’re really receptive to all the things I try to implement as a coach. It’s been going really well as we start into competition now.”
Ashnault capped off his final season as a Scarlet Knight with a 32-0 record, winning a national title and becoming the program’s all-time wins leader with 123 victories. He’s also the only four-time All-American and three-time Big Ten champion in program history.
Once Ashnault was finished wrestling on the Banks, he focused solely on his already ongoing freestyling career. He finished first at the 2019 and 2020 Pan American Championships before a spot opened at Rutgers after long-time assistant coach John Leonardis left the program to become the executive director of the Scarlet Knights Wrestling Club. Ashnault was hired as an assistant coach ahead of the 2021-2022 season. He credits his time spent competing as an influence on his coaching style today.
“Through my student-athlete experience and competing for records, I was able to learn tons of things that translate right to wrestling,” he said. “I just feel like I got a really good perspective of the sport of wrestling through my experience at Rutgers, so that all really carried over and I’m still trying to dig back into some of those experiences and some of those memories to use them to better myself as a coach and to use for my athletes so they can have an easier experience or easier time than I had.”
Ashnault worked alongside head coach Scott Goodale, assistant coach Joe Pollard and then associate head coach Donny Pritzlaff, who became the Columbia head coach in June. Ashnault said he’s learned a lot from the highly talented Knights coaching staff but likes to take different things from every coach he’s encountered.
“I’ve used things that I’ve gotten from all coaches everywhere I’ve been,” Ashnault said. “I was always around really good models of the sport, always trying to learn what I could and I think I took a little bit of something from every single coach I came across. Definitely, my time at Rutgers was where I had the influential coaches for my own wrestling career, so, I take a lot from all of them and I try to put my own twist on it as well – I’m just an accumulation of all the good coaches I’ve been around.”
Ahead of the 2022-2023 season, Ashnault resigned as assistant coach at Rutgers to return his attention to his freestyling career. Two years later, Ashnault decided to move on from competing and return to coaching. Princeton head coach Joe Dubuque hired him as an assistant coach in late May.
“It was pretty much time to move on, put competing in the sport behind and move on to something else,” Ashnault said. “I really loved wrestling, I wanted to be involved in it in either competitive or the coaching realm so it seemed like the best thing to do right now, get back into it, put my all into it and see if I enjoy it as much as I did competing in the sport. I’ve had a lot of fun.”
It’s only been about six months into his tenure with the Tigers, but Ashnault is loving every moment.
“The process is really enjoyable right now,” he said. “We got guys that are buying into what we’re trying to do and we feel like we have something special with a special group of athletes and the coaches we have here – we feel like we have something really good.”
Ashnault didn’t have to wait long to compete against his alma mater, as the Knights wrestled Princeton last Sunday at Jadwin Gymnasium, winning 32-7 in the 87th meeting between both teams. Ashnault admitted he didn’t have much time to catch up with Goodale and the rest of the staff, but he still got to talk to him before the match.
“I didn’t have the most time, but I did get to catch up and say hi and pretty much just catch up a little bit.”
It’s early in Ashnault’s coaching career, but he didn’t rule out the idea of becoming a head coach one day.
“I’m happy where I’m at and I’m just taking it moment to moment,” he said. “I don’t have a plan to be a head coach but I’m not saying that’s not what I want to do one day. I really enjoy being the assistant coach at Princeton University and I plan to be with these guys for a while.”
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