When Clinton Childs’ feet hit the floor Monday morning, he had a new title.

Head coach.

The 35-year-old former Nebraska running back is now the head wrestling coach at Omaha Northwest. The Huskies began practice Monday, like other high school teams across the state in winter sports.

“When I woke up I was thinking to myself, ‘Today is the first day of practice. And not only is this practice, it’s my program,’” Childs said. “I’m pretty excited.”

He went over stances and double-leg takedowns and even quoted legendary Iowa coach Dan Gable. He picked out uniforms, made sure kids had their physicals done and worked up a sweat teaching. There was even a point Monday that he got a little choked up talking about his cousin and former wrestling coach Phillip Doolittle, who died last year.

“It’s almost like he called me to come and do this,” he said.

Childs is coaching the sport he grew up in. “I started wrestling when I was 4 years old,” he said. “What a lot of people don’t realize is that it’s my first love.”

After six years as an assistant at Omaha North and one at Omaha Westside, Childs takes over a program that hasn’t had an individual state champion since 1989 and qualified just two for last winter’s state tournament. Numbers were an issue.

Childs said he had a few more than 20 wrestlers in preseason conditioning and hopes to keep between 22 and 25.

“Last year we only had four wrestlers when the season was over,” said senior Angelo Smith, one of only a couple of returners. “Coach Childs has brought a lot of new things. He’s changing the way we learn things. Change in a real good way.”

How did it all come about? A little more than a month ago, Childs visited new Northwest principal Herman Colvin to talk about a couple of kids he was working with at his new position at the Boys & Girls Club. Colvin, his football coach at North High in the late 1980s and early 1990s, offered him the position, and Childs accepted after turning down other head coaching opportunities in the past. He called it the “perfect situation.”

“It all fit together,” Childs said.

He’s the second former NU running back now coaching at Northwest. Former teammate Damon Benning finished his first year at the helm of the Northwest football team last month, and actually sent Childs a couple of his players to go out for wrestling.

The two played together in little league and against each other in high school before sharing time at I-back for the Huskers.

Benning has talked to Childs about helping out with football, something he did for 12 years at North as running backs coach. The timing wasn’t right this fall, but Childs called it “something that could definitely happen now.”

“I like the fact that we’re young coaches,” Childs said, “and we’re young head coaches in the same building. We’re going to be able to feed off of each other and help each other out.”

Just like Benning, he’ll be building from the ground up.

“There’s only one way to go from here,” Childs said. “We have kids in the wrestling room that have never been here before. But I would much rather have a situation like this. Quite frankly, I would much rather start with a team like this that’s eager to learn and wants to be here.”

And he’s fine knowing there will be bumps in the road.

“We’re going to laugh and have fun along the way,” Childs said. “But we’re going to be serious, too.”

Contact the writer:

850-0781, nickrubek@hotmail.com

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