Muleskinner

Issue date: 3/11/10 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Drew Woolery: Muleskinner Robin Ersland (right) has coached at UCM for 15 years.

The husky man steps out of his silver Toyota Tundra with that same Midwestern smile he's wore in Warrensburg for the past 15 years. He's ready to leave for the day, but if you ask him, he'll politely tell you his career in an extra 15 minutes.
Robin Ersland, the coach of the Mules' wrestling team, has a lot on his mind anyway.

It's this past Tuesday and Ersland walks back into Warrensburg's Police Academy - the unlikely facility where the Mules have been forced to practice with the Recreational Center on campus being renovated.

During this season, Ersland has taught his wrestlers in an undersized gym. Usually, the Mules' practice times change with each week, mainly because the academy needs the building for multiple training sessions. And unlike any year Ersland can remember, the Mules have practiced on Friday nights - a sacrifice unheard of for young men in college.

In a way, the circumstance of working with lower-than-average facility has been the signature of Ersland's career as a coach: He's always seems to make the most of what he has. Wrestling experts will tell you that's Ersland's best quality, and why he is being inducted Thursday into the Division II Wrestling Hall of Fame.

The ceremony is part of the national championship at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Ersland will become the second member from Central Missouri to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame, joining former wrester Mark Burrell, who was inducted in 2002.

As Ersland looks off into the mild, stuffy air inside the academy, he thinks about the achievement he never envisioned when he was the only wrester on his high school team in Menominee, Mich.

"All of a sudden," says Ersland with laughter, "I have to give a speech and I'm still not ready."

At this point, Ersland knows he just finished his final practice at Central Missouri. Before the start of his 15th season, Ersland announced he was going to step down after the national championship to start the wrestling program at Minot State, a Division II school in North Dakota.

Throughout his 27 years as a coach, Ersland has enjoyed most of his success at Central Missouri. In 2006, he led the Mules to a 15th-place finish at the national tournament where Plamen Paskalev became UCM's first national champion since 1991 as he went undefeated at 18-0. Ersland's best year came in 2001, when he led the Mules to a 14-5-1 record and a school-best 11th-place finish. Ersland has coached 30 All-Americans and has been voted Midwest Region Coach of the Year five times.

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