Martinsville Center is the Leading Edge in Wrestling

Examine the backgrounds on some of the leading collegiate wrestling coaches in the United States and one name will come up again and again: Ernie Monaco.

Monaco's nearly 30 years as a wrestling coach has a legacy that may never be topped—he helped launched the wrestling careers of 10 Div. 1 collegiate coaches, 12 NCAA national title holders, 80 New Jersey varsity champions (and another 76 runners up), as well as instilling the personal skills that led some former students to careers in the Secret Service, FBI and Navy Seals.

Furthermore, his model of offering year-round coaching for young wrestlers has been emulated not only throughout New Jersey, but across the country.

And it's from a rather quiet and self-effacing man whose calm demeanor seems at odds with expectations.

"Most people, when they meet me, think I should have a drill instructor's hat and be barking out orders, but that's not my personality," he said.

Instead, his success lies in something else, not a secret maneuver for his grapplers to use or a special move to avoid take-downs. 

"I was taught that at the core of a successful person is a good person first," Monaco said.

So while the kids participating in the classes and private tutoring at Edge Wrestling School, located inside TEST Sports Club in Martinsville, do get practical instruction in wrestling skills, there's that "little extra," as Monaco calls it, that makes the difference: learning to adapt to situations, to stay disciplined and focused on goals.

Monaco notes wrestlers are a disciplined lot, having to make weight limits constantly and other challenges other athletes don't face. Monaco said he tries to build on that to help his wrestlers build the character skills needed for success in matches and in life.

"My goal is to have them use wrestling to get ahead in life," Monaco said.

He launched Edge Wrestling School in 1982, after graduating with a bachelor's degree in business administration from Upsala College, when he began working with his younger brothers and some of their friends in the basement of his parents house.

In 1984, he began taking on additional students and soon, found local building inspectors knocking on the door to say the residence wasn't a suitable place for a school. He opened the doors of his first school in Belleville, a 3,000-square foot center, and two years later, moved to a 6,000-square foot center in Kenilworth.

His schools were the nation's first wrestling schools, and he was aiming to elevate wrestling to the level of competition other sports have developed, sports such as gymnastics, karate, soccer and basketball, where clubs provide year-round development for young players.

"I was the first guy on the block in the whole country doing this," Monaco said, adding in the early days of the school, his students would travel from across the state and from New York.

But his success drew imitators—sometimes launched by former students—and after 15 years, he closed down the Kenilworth studio because of declining enrollments. Concerned about the future of his school, he added a second career as a wood shop and, later, technology teacher at .

Bringing the same focus on students that made his wrestling school so successful to the classroom helped , and when he speaks of his teaching or coaching, he uses the same words—he aims to get his charges excited about the subject so they will "dive into it and learn more."

"My effectiveness is my ability to share with kids what I know," he said.

He knows his middle school students may not enjoy the immediate kinds of achievement his wrestling students gain in matches, he has heard from some former students that his technology classes led them to pursue engineering careers, perhaps a credit to him that's analogous to the collegiate coaches whose careers he launched.