Sunday Sitdown: Reflecting with Lynnfield tennis and wrestling coach Craig Stone at the outset of his 93rd season

Boston Globe

13-04-2025

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We caught up with Stone ahead of his 44th tennis season — and 93rd overall — to talk about how high school athletics have changed in his half-century of coaching.
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Next winter would be your 50th wrestling season, are you planning to be back in 2025-26?
Yes, you can't end on 49. That's a horrible number. It's like being married and you're going to get divorced after 49 years. I jokingly tell people, I'm trying to get to 100 seasons.
You're not far off. When you started the wrestling program at Lynnfield it was a club sport?
Yes, in 1975 there were 20 kids who got together and signed a petition that they wanted to have a team. I was the only one who applied for the [coaching] job so I was in. We did a club program and the athletic director said to me 'Do you want to go JV next year?' I said, 'If we go JV, we're not going to get the kids out. Let's just go varsity and take our lumps.' Our first match of the year we tied Methuen, 36-36, then we lost 11 in a row.
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This past winter, in his 49th season on the mat, Craig Stone guided the Lynnfield/North Reading co-op to an 18-3-1 season.
Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
Back then, could you even comprehend coaching in 2025? You probably thought you'd be taking a flying car to practice?
I remember our 1999 banquet and I said 'Next year we'll be in the Year 2000.' That sounded like the Jetsons. It was hard to believe. My club team [players] are approaching their 70s. I don't think anybody who coaches looks that long-term. It's just one of those things you go year by year . . . I kept doing it out of joy, and also necessity. You had to pay the bills and that extra stipend certainly was nice. You just kind of get hooked, the same way the athletes do, by the competitiveness, the camaraderie, the team-building, and improvement that goes on.
You retired from teaching nine years ago, what keeps you coaching?
Two things: First, relationships. The relationships with the athlete, with the parents, and with the community. I enjoy that interaction. The second is I love the competitiveness and the opportunity to find ways that I can help the athletes be successful.
Let me take you back to your own childhood in Warwick (R.I.). I read that the Boys Scouts and YMCA were big influences on you?
A: I was 8 or 9 and I brought home a flier from the elementary school about programs at the YMCA. It was a Saturday afternoon and my mom put me on a bus and off I went. Then I got involved in the Junior Leader Corp. The next thing you know it's my senior year in high school and I'm thinking 'What am I going to do?' I had a good math and science background. My mother wanted me to go into engineering. My father said do whatever makes you happy. I pictured myself doing what I do now, so off to Springfield [College] I went [where he wrestled for the first time].
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And you didn't wrestle until you got to Springfield?
At Springfield you have to take classes in different skills to get a base and so you know how to teach the activity. I took a wrestling skills class as a freshman and we had an intramural tournament, freshman against sophomores. I guess I did well enough to impress the freshman wrestling coach who happened to have a void in his lineup at my weight, which was 167 at the time. I went out for the team and I got hooked and I ended up wrestling for four years.
In high school you played football in the fall and basketball in the winter. What got you into tennis?
I'm shooting hoops and one of my friends comes in and says 'We need a fourth to play doubles outside.' I'd never played tennis before in my life. I went out and played and I came home and said to my mother 'I want to play tennis.' She said 'Well, you don't have a racquet.' She was concerned if we bought a racquet I might not continue with it, so she said I had to pay half. I bought myself a Pancho Gonzalez wooden racket. I paid $6 and she paid $6.
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Lynnfield coach Craig Stone chuckled with his players while sharing the lineup for a Cape Ann match against Hamilton-Wenham in 2023.
Winslow Townson for The Boston Globe
You've been around wrestling for more than 50 years now, how have you seen the sport, or the culture around it, change?
Every sport runs four seasons. There's no downtime. Back when I started you had the traditional kids with football, then basketball, then baseball, and you basically took the summer off. You could be a successful athlete doing that. What has happened with specialization, everybody is now training out of season. It's not so much what you do during the season to improve, it's what you do out of the season, not only with your skill base but your conditioning.
I think the level of wrestling and tennis is as high as it's ever been. It's the quantity, the number of people who are competing at that level now. Consequently, the schedules and the workload has increased tremendously. Back then, we'd have 14-15 dual meets and maybe two or three tournaments. Now, kids are wrestling 50 times a year.
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Speaking of the kids, I've talked to a lot of coaches about how the kids have changed over the decades. What's your experience?
I believe the motivation, the discipline, that has pretty much stayed the same. I think what has changed is there's so much opportunity, so much mobility. Before, you went to school, you did an after-school sport and then you went home. Now, everybody has a million places to be and a car to get there. They have a phone. I think that has caused them, if it's not going that well, then they just move on. I think you probably don't have the percentage of athletes who will stick it out for four years with the hopes of by the time they're a senior they may have a shot. The other thing that has changed is the way coaching has transformed and how the athlete is treated. The intervention from the parents . . .
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That was my next question. I was curious if the kids have changed. But I know the parents have changed.
You've heard of the helicopter parents. It's the same in sports. I've been in town for over 50 years and I've been fortunate. I have tried to be transparent and consistent throughout my coaching career . . . I've had very few issues.
Your wrestling co-op with North Reading has lasted 20 years. What has that partnership been like?
It has been fantastic. In the early 2000s we started to notice the decrease in numbers and enrollment was going down . . . When I started teaching, Lynnfield was a three-year high school and there were over 700 kids in three grades. Now, there are four grades and we have 550 kids. We're trying to fill five winter sports. There's just not enough athletes to go around. North Reading is similar in size and was experiencing the same issues. They dropped their wrestling program in 2000. I live in North Reading, my kids went to school there, and I proposed [a co-op]. Our first season, in 2005, we had three kids from North Reading. We got as high as 40, 45 kids equally distributed between the schools . . . We're five miles apart and you go from Thanksgiving football game where they're knocking each other down to the wrestling team where they're building each other up.
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Do you give much thought to reaching 1,300 wins?
I'm sneaking up on it. I'd like to be able to get to that point, but it's not something where I'm going to hang in there just to get it. If it comes, it comes.
Brendan Kurie can be reached at