Leen leaves Pitt staff, but sees bright future for Panthers
Jordan Leen might have left the Pitt wrestling program for a head coaching opportunity, but the former associate head coach has news for the top teams in the country: The Panthers’ run of success is just getting started.
Brown University announced on Monday that Leen, who had been on Keith Gavin’s staff for the past five seasons, has been named the head coach at the Ivy League school, ending weeks of speculation.
“My time at Pitt, I’ll prize for a long time,” Leen said, as he made the nine-hour drive from Pittsburgh to Providence, Rhode Island. “I got to be a part of some big steps for the program. I got to coach some special people and work with special people and friends. That train is running, and if you’re in the room and see who is there and who’s coming, it’s not stopping. Their best years are ahead.”
Leen helped oversee some pretty special years during his time in Oakland. He coached 27 NCAA qualifiers, 10 ACC champions and seven All-Americans – including NCAA runners-up Jake Wentzel and Nino Bonaccorsi – with the Panthers.
“Jordan was so helpful,” Gavin said. “When we got here, he had experience at a couple different programs – at Cornell, at Virginia, at Duke. We kind of needed that, to have someone that had seen it done in a couple of different ways.”
Gavin is pleased to see Leen get an opportunity as a head coach.
“We’re all happy for him,” the Panthers head coach said. “I think it’s a great fit. That was the sell to get him here – ‘If you come here, it’s the best chance to advance your career.’ ”
As proud as he is of what Pitt has accomplished over the past five years, Leen is even more excited about the 2022 recruiting class, led by Mac Stout, Dayton Pitzer, Jared Keslar and Briar Priest – four WPIAL wrestlers ranked in the top 150 nationally by MatScouts.
“One of the things we set out to do from the start was to lock down (the WPIAL),” Leen said. “This 2022 class was the first time that we were able to do that. We were consistently getting western Pa. guys, but we weren’t able to get all the guys that we wanted like we did in 2022. We’re very proud of this 2022 class. We believe these guys are going to be very successful, and we’re proud of that, but we’re also proud of what that group represents: The top-shelf western Pa. guys choosing to stay home when they have every opportunity to go anywhere in the country. That was a big deal for us, and they’re a big deal.”
Leen is also proud of the culture change that he and Gavin helped oversee. Pitt wrestlers had a number of off-the-mat incidents under former coach Jason Peters, and Gavin initially led with a firm hand.
“There had to be some boundaries and accountability,” Leen recalled. “We said, ‘Now that we have that straightened out and we have the guys in the room that are like-minded, now what? Now what does the culture look like?’ Keith let the guys establish their own culture, and here’s what happened: A true family culture developed because we’re experiencing something that no other school can experience because the majority of our team grew up together and they have a legitimate reason to be contending at the ACC and national tournaments.”
That was never more evident than in St. Louis in 2021.
“When Nino and Wentzel made the NCAA finals, Wentzel pulled up a picture on his phone of them together when they were seven and eight years old,” Leen said. “It's a true family environment. That’s well-established. … I realized how special that was when I was there, and I don’t think that can be duplicated anywhere else.”
His new home will have plenty of Pennsylvania flavor as well. The Brown roster includes nine wrestlers from the Keystone State, including WPIAL products Mason Spears (Franklin Regional), A.J. Corrado (Burrell) and Ian Oswalt (Burrell).
“I’m looking forward to that,” Leen said. “I watched those guys, and now I’m going to get to coach them. We’ll see what we can do.”
Leen, who won a national title while wrestling for Cornell in 2008, downplayed the notion that schools with high academic standards face a bigger challenge in recruiting. He said student-athletes don’t have to choose between success on the mat and in the classroom.
“Excellence is habit-forming, and a high achiever is going to be a high achiever in both,” he said. “Our best wrestlers at Pitt, by and large, are also our best students. It’s about an elite-level mindset and approach.”