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Paul Amic at his home office, where he compiled seven decades of wrestling history into his first book
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When examining the history of wrestling in Southwestern Pennsylvania, the greater Canonsburg area is a good place to start. It was Canonsburg High School that won the first-ever WPIAL wrestling tournament in 1936, and it’s this community that has largely dominated the sport since, producing more regional champions than any other area school district.
Thus it’s fitting that the person to put the entire seven-decade history of WPIAL wrestling into perspective is a local boy. Paul Amic, a 1955 graduate of Canonsburg High School, spent some 10 years compiling the names, statistics, and results that make up the last 69 years of high school wrestling in his book, “The History of Western Pennsylvania Wrestling.” An almanac of the sport spanning 1936 to 2005, it includes the names of 5,000 local, regional, and state champions, along with a summary of each season.
“Ever since 1948, when I went to my first wrestling match in Canonsburg, I was in love with the sport,” says Amic, who wrestled for the school in 1953 and 54. (A concussion kept him out of the 1955 season.) “Even today, my wife and I will go watch a match wherever we happen to be in the state.”
“It’s a passion that was born during a time when the Western Pennsylvania town was important,” Amic says, “when the high school team was the Town’s Team, and inter-school rivalries were followed as intensely as the professional sports rivalries of today.” Clashes between schools were talked about year-round and drew large crowds. In the sport’s heyday, the only way to see Canonsburg or Waynesburg wrestle was to purchase tickets in advance.
Over the years, despite traveling around the state and around the world, Amic has amassed a considerable number of Western Pennsylvania wrestling stories and results clipped from local newspapers. (While stationed in Libya during an Air Force stint in the late 1950s, Amic had a local paper delivered to him and continued to save clips.) Ten years ago, while working as a township manager outside York, Pennsylvania, Amic (a former Canonsburg borough manager) decided to compile a book.
When he moved back to this side of the state a few years later, Amic started spending his free time in the Washington Library, studying wrestling results from old newspapers and piecing together a comprehensive history. The result was finally published last year.
Amic and his wife Carol were walking through Canonsburg one day after the book’s publication when they came across one of the wrestlers mentioned in the book.
“I introduced him to my wife and told her that he was a wrestling champ in Canonsburg back in the 1940s,” he says. “His face lit up like a kid, because those are some of the best memories of your life, and to hear that his accomplishment was remembered meant something. I've been so pleased with the response to the book. People have called on the phone and ordered this and told their friends about it. I think it brought back a lot of memories.”
Interest in the book has been greatest among people who were involved with the sport prior to the 1970s, which mirrors that gradual decline wrestling has seen in recent decades. Today, some Western Pennsylvania schools have ended their wrestling programs, while others have consolidated with neighboring districts due to lack of interest. As a passionate fan, it’s a trend Amic has watched unhappily.
“I still love the sport even though the sport is failing,” he says.
The problem is two-fold, he believes. First, those involved with wrestling aren’t doing enough to promote it. “Today, you have difficulty just finding out when the match is or what the scores are,” Amic says. “That’s a matter of the coaches and the people involved with the sport calling up the newspapers and getting that information published.”
Second, it is the same thing that drew Amic to the sport in the first place: the incredible discipline required to successfully compete. Though he’s a wrestling historian, Amic doesn’t entertain the illusion that athletes were better in his day. He readily admits that today’s wrestlers are better than ever, and the training and techniques incredibly refined. The problem is, there aren’t always enough kids willing to do what it takes to compete, especially when there are so many more options available these days.
“Some kids today don’t have the same discipline, but those who do, and those who make the sacrifice are magnificent.
“Wrestling taught me how to be self-sufficient, to depend on myself, and to persevere. It’s the most physically demanding sport I’ve competed in, but it’s also one in which you have to use your brain as much as your body. That builds a lot of character.”
The History of Western Pennsylvania Wrestling” by Paul W. Amic can be purchased from the author for $20 per copy. For more information, call 412-914-0160 or e-mail pcamic@aol.com.
