Sitting at the University of Wisconsin wrestling office, head coach Barry Davis looked every bit the part of high energy wrestling coach. His shirt, shorts and hair absolutely soaked from his interrupted weightlifting session, beads of sweat fell off of him and onto the carpet in abundance. His breathing ragged from the supreme effort he had given to his workout, the 43-year old coach could have passed for a member of the team at first glance.

But his efforts toward his personal training in the past 12 years are nothing compared to the dedication he has shown in attempting to train and coach the Badger wrestling team to a level of national contention. That ardor has culminated into a squad this season that may well be the best he has ever had.

“It can be a great team,” Davis said. “We can have a lot of success if everyone continues to do their job. That is going to be the key throughout the year. It’s going to come down to keeping their focus. If they continue to do the little things right, pay attention to detail and be very disciplined, then we could really start a great upward trend and some good things could really happen.”

Davis is certainly in a position to know success, having coached 11 All-Americans, five Big Ten Champions and two NCAA champs — all the while keeping UW more than competitive within the tough Big Ten Conference.

Before he was a coach, Davis had an outstanding wrestling career himself, being named an All-American four times, Big Ten Champion (at Iowa) four times, winning three individual NCAA titles, earning spots on two US Olympic Teams and winning the silver medal in the 1984 Olympics.

In his dozen years at UW, Davis has watched his program evolve and become steadily more and more competitive, even finishing ninth and tenth in the nation in 1999-2000 and 2000-2001, respectively. Davis says the recruits have gradually gotten better and points to this year’s class as maybe the school’s best ever recruiting class.

“Right now we have a lot of depth on our team,” Davis said. “These last three years have been some really good recruiting years for us. This past year, we had seven high school All-Americans in one shot. There has just been a lot more talent on the team.”

Regardless of the athlete, Davis says he can point to a complex system of principles that create a great wrestler.

“Keys to success: setting goals, establishing good habits, thriving on pressure, persistence, perseverance, work ethic,” Davis said, mentioning that he has a board in the practice facility listing these principles to keep the athletes constantly reminded of them.

Davis added that discipline might be the most important “wrestler’s virtue.” “You have to have a good plan and be able to be very disciplined with things away from the mat, such as workouts outside of [practice], diet,” he said. “It’s important that you have a good work ethic in [practice] but just as important to work hard away from it.”

Being the incarnation of discipline himself, Davis makes sure he sets the tone for his team by being a leader by example, working just as hard as they are.

“Being a good role-model is important,” Davis said. “Being in the weight room — just with the presence — I’m not on the mat, but the guys see me working hard and training. They see my discipline and the discipline of the whole coaching staff.”

Though Davis hasn’t changed his general philosophy, he has altered his approach a little over the years, admitting that he has slowed down some in emphasizing the physical aspect of wrestling and has begun to work more and more on the technical skills of the sport.

“I used to only really focus on the hard, physical wrestling. I think what we are doing now is spending a little bit more time on technical skills,” Davis said. “The Big Ten is a real, real physical conference and we still need to work on the hard wrestling, but at the same time I think I work on the technical stuff more than I used to.”

As much as Davis tries to set an example and lead in the weight room and locker room, he is even more conscious of trying to teach his athletes to be good people off the wrestling mat.

“You want to be able to teach them in the sport of wrestling, but at the same time you want to be able to be a good role model with them [as a person],” Davis said. “You want them to be able to go out into the real world and give back to the community and the university and being successful in their career. We are producing not only wrestlers, we are producing great contributors. It’s important to make these guys successful all around — academically and athletically.”

One lesson Davis says everyone could learn, especially his wrestlers, is how to handle adversity, both on the mat and in life in general.

“I try to teach them how to set goals and achieve them,” Davis said. “To be persistent, when things don’t go well: Are you going to throw in the towel or are you going to get right back at it? Things aren’t always going to go your way and when they don’t, how are you going to react? It’s easy to do things when things are going good, but you need to learn to do things during adversity.”

With the Badgers off to a 3-0 start and having won handily in those victories, Davis hopes to really make some noise in the Big Ten this season. But no matter where the Badgers end up, they can rest assured their coach will be with them all the way.