Neal Rubin

Veteran coach starts program for kids in southwest Detroit

Mike Rodriguez wants to help turn boys and girls into upright citizens, and he figures the way to do it is to put them on a mat and teach them to twist each other into irregular shapes.

Heck, it worked for him.

Rodriguez, 77, was never what we refer to nowadays as an "at-risk child." His parents didn't come all this way from Mexico to let their five boys be hooligans. But it was wrestling that sent him to the University of Michigan and gave him a purpose and a platform, and it's wrestling that he'll teach to any 10- to 14-year-old in southwest Detroit who's willing to learn.

He's the face and the evangelistic voice of a program called Beat the Streets Detroit that will hand out its first pamphlets when school opens after Labor Day. Classes have already started at Detroit Catholic Central High School, where he spent 41 of his 51 years as a coach, and the kids in a few P.E. classes heard the gospel according to Rodriguez last week.

"You're going to be hard-nosed people and godly people," he told one group, and then he pointed to the long row of 8-by-10 photos on the wall of the wrestling room. "These guys are not only our state champions," he said, "we got eight millionaires up there."

By the next class, the number had grown to 10 millionaires. It could be the fluctuation of the stock market, or it could be that the number doesn't matter -- that it's not the money, it's the drive and determination and perseverance that it took to earn it.

Feeling the nudge

When Rodriguez retired in 2007, he'd won 732 meets, more than any other high school coach in the country. He'd been at Catholic Central through seven state championships, three campuses and two knee replacements.

He wasn't tired of the kids -- he'll never be tired of kids -- but he lives four doors from the last campus in Redford, and now he was driving to Novi during rush hour and idiots were cutting him off at 70 mph and tossing up a finger.

So he walked away, and when a former college wrestling coach named Ken Kraft asked him to create a Detroit outpost for Beat the Streets, Rodriguez said no. "Give me a chance to find out what life is like," he said.

Beat the Streets USA Wrestling was launched in New York five years ago. Unlike Detroit, New York had high school wrestling, but there wasn't much of it: 23 high school programs with fewer than 300 participants. According to national chairman Al Bevilacqua, the 2009 school year will begin there with more than 4,500 boys and girls wrestling for 59 high schools and 70 middle schools. The program is also active in Chicago, St. Louis and Columbus, Ohio.

Back in Wayne County, Rodriguez was at church with a son when the pastor started talking about how retirees still had plenty to give. David Rodriguez began poking his dad in the leg. "Get off me!" Mike said. "I can hear him!"

Repaying a debt

What sealed the deal for Rodriguez and his wife, June, was the chance to start the program at Patton Community Center near Mexican Town. Once she heard that, he says, "she was 100 percent behind me."

As he remembers it, there were only two Hispanic families in Ann Arbor when he was a kid. His parents meant to settle in Detroit, but they fell asleep on the train from Texas and missed their stop, and Ann Arbor was where the conductor booted them off.

Teaching wrestling in two languages feels like repaying a debt to his heritage. Sessions will start Sept. 15 -- call (313) 485-7241 or hit www.btsdetroit.org for details -- and every elementary- and middle-schooler in that part of the city will get a flier next week.

Donors will supply each boy and girl with wrestling shoes, shorts and a T-shirt. Rodriguez and other volunteers will supply instruction. The sport, he says, will supply everything that matters.

"We're going to teach them to take pride in who they are and where they're from," he says. And whether or not they're any good at it, "We're going to teach them how to be winners."

nrubin@detnews.com (313) 222-1874