Johnny Cobb became the first-ever coach of the new men's and women's wrestling program at Wayland Baptist on January 20, 2010.  A two-time Texas High School Coach of the Year while at Amarillo’s Tascosa High School, Cobb is a member of the Texas Wrestling Ring of Honor and the Texas chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Okla. 

A native of Amarillo, Cobb was a three-time District Champion at Tascosa High School in the mid-60’s, losing only one high school match in three years of competition.  He went on to wrestle at Oklahoma State University until injuries put a premature end to his collegiate wrestling career.

One of the founding members of the Panhandle Amateur Wrestling Association, he also founded the first kid’s wrestling program in the Panhandle of Texas at the Maverick Boys Club in 1971.  His teams won both elementary and junior high team state championships titles and over 50 elementary and junior high individual state titles.

Cobb took over as wrestling coach for both the boy’s and girl’s programs at his alma mater in 1988.  Between 1990 and his retirement in 2008, Cobb’s teams won three state championships and finished in the top ten 15 times.  Twenty-one Tascosa High wrestlers earned individual state titles under Cobb’s tutelage, 28 were national qualifiers, and one, Brandon Slay, won the 2000 Olympic Gold Medal.

At a press conference announcing his hiring, Coach Cobb stressed that he wanted to make the Wayland wrestling program a community effort and that he would not settle for mediocrity.   “I am going to have some help, some excellent help, not only in an assistant coach, but  I am going to draw on the expertise of the quality, quality coaches in this area to help make this program our program – the community’s program.   

“Believe me, I know the difficulties involved in starting up a first-year program, but I’m going to ask the kids to set the goals right when they come in, and that bar needs to be high.  If they don’t make some of those goals it’s going to be with an effort that they can live with the rest of their lives.  Simply put, my philosophy is that we are going to strive for excellence here and we are going to do it with integrity.”