By Blake Chadwick

Minneapolis wrestling head coach Chas Hauck has been making impacts on kids’ lives for 26 years now.

Hauck has been around wrestling since 5th grade when he decided to give it a chance. Now, he is the head wrestling coach, a title he has held for the last 10 years.

“My absolute love came in high school,” Hauck said. “I started to mature just a little, we had an amazing coach with Jeff Giles, we had good teams that worked really hard not just for themselves, but for the whole team and really good leadership. It became a brotherhood for me.”

Hauck rekindled that wrestling love again after his time in the military.

“I got into coaching after coming back from the military and seeing how much wrestling and all the lessons we learn in it and the mentality at a young age had helped me through a lot of the trials of not just military life, but also adult life,” Hauck said.

Hauck uses his background to keep up with his “tough but fair” coaching style, a style that has produced many great wrestlers.

This year’s list of great wrestlers includes senior 120-pound Chase Johnson, sophomore 126-pound Brayton Peters, senior 138-pound Joel Abell, and senior 150-pound Braylon Smith.

On top of those studs, Hauck noted that he has a lot of young guys too.

“I’ve got some young freshman wrestling JV , that we are excited about in upcoming years.”