Keever Stumbled Onto Wrestling, Left Indelible Footprint

His name wasn’t easily recognized because he didn’t coach a glamour sport.

But for the past 27 years, few people could match what John Keever accomplished with his wrestling teams at Moorpark College.

There were consecutive state championships in 1990 and ’91. There were 17 conference titles and only two losing seasons. There was an outstanding 251-117-6 record.

Nearly 80 of his athletes went on to wrestle at four-year schools. He coached 53 All-Americans.

Now Keever’s distinguished career at the helm of the Raider wrestling program is over. He has stepped down, reluctantly, to concentrate on his duties as the school’s athletic director.

It was a day he feared but one he couldn’t avoid. Since he became athletic director four years ago, Keever suspected that someday the responsibilities of that job would claim a lot more of his time.

He was right.

The college participates in 14 intercollegiate sports and the majority of them are in the fall, including wrestling, which sometimes kept him from attending crucial games in other sports.

In December, for instance, Keever missed Moorpark’s upset of El Camino in the Western State Bowl because he was at the State wrestling tournament at Chabot College in Hayward.

That pretty much convinced him that something had to give.

Keever, however, walked away with a heavy heart.

“I’m definitely going to miss it,” Keever said. “Wrestling became addictive for me.”

The interesting thing is that Keever, 51, never planned it that way. He just stumbled onto it and the more he got involved the more it pulled him closer .

“When I came to Moorpark, the advertisement for the job was for an assistant football coach and to coach a second sport,” Keever said. “They asked me if I could do wrestling and I fell in love with the sport.”

That was in the fall of 1969, when the college was only 2 years old, and neither the football nor the wrestling team instilled fear in opponents.

The Raiders, now one of the top football programs in the state, struggled during Keever’s nine seasons as offensive line coach. But Keever soon had the wrestling squad on a roll.

After finishing 1-11 in his first season, Keever didn’t have another losing season until 1982, when the Raiders dropped to 4-9. In between, he had seasons of 14-1, 15-3, 12-2-1 and a remarkable 17-0 in 1974-75, when wrestling was still a winter sport.

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Not bad for a guy who was a wrestling neophyte.

“I had on-the-job training,” Keever said. “I went to every [wrestling] camp and clinic and national tournament and became a student of the sport. . . . I also had the personality to be a good recruiter. I worked real hard to recruit good athletes.”

In 1990, Keever believed he had recruited the right group of wrestlers to challenge for the state title. The Raiders had finished second in the State meet in 1989 with a freshman-laden team that figured to be the favorite to take the trophy the following year. The team lived up to expectations and won the first of two consecutive titles.

The second one, however, took Keever by surprise. The Raiders scored 101.25 points to outdistance second-place Fresno (86.5) and Keever was selected state coach of the year for the second time in a row.

“We just had a phenomenal two days when athletes rose above their level,” Keever said.

But Keever said although the state championships were the culmination of many years of hard work, they are not the most important thing that happened to him in the sport.

“The highlight of my career was being able to maintain a lot of special relationships with the athletes,” Keever said. “Wrestling is sort of a real family atmosphere. There’s a certain closeness in the practice room every day. You get to know your athletes better than in a sport with larger numbers.”

Keever won’t experience that any longer with the wrestling team but he’ll still deal with athletes daily as the throwing coach for the Moorpark track and field team. It’s another one of those jobs that doesn’t grab headlines but Keever doesn’t mind.

He didn’t get into coaching to reap fame and glory.