Don Klostreich, the architect and foundational force of the Sunnyside High School wrestling dynasty, has passed away at age 86 because of health reasons.
Klostreich transformed the program at Sunnyside into one of the most dominant wrestling powerhouses in the nation after arriving at Sunnyside in the fall of 1973.
Over the next 15 years, he built a winning culture defined by nine state championships.
He led the Blue Devils to their first 5A state title in 1979 and followed that with an eight-year run of titles from 1981 to 1988.
The dynasty was born and it has thrived under the coaches who followed him — Richard Sanchez, Robert DeBerry and Anthony Leon.
Sunnyside has now won 39 state championships, including nine consecutively under Leon.
“To win one state championship is tough,” Klostreich told AllSportsTucson.com in 2019. “There are a lot of schools that have never won a state championship and they have some pretty good programs.
“Every time Sunnyside wins a state championship, I get credit for it. It blows me away. I’m happy. I’m proud that my name is mentioned.”
While his tactical mind and legendary practice sessions were the hallmarks of his success, Klostreich was best known for his impact on the lives of his wrestlers from the southside of Tucson.
“(Wrestling under Klostreich) was rough. It was tough,” said Roy Tadeo, a member of Sunnyside’s first state title team in 1978-79. “If it’s not rough and tough the best is not going to come out of there. If you don’t like it, get out. You get on it or get out. (Klostreich) always pushed us that way.
“I could see where he was going. There was a lot of discipline and teamwork. It was the can-do attitude. My older brother, Juan Tadeo, wrestled before I did. He always told me, ‘I did it, you can do it, too.’”
He was a demanding, yet deeply caring mentor. He often opened his own home to athletes in need, while teaching them how to be men of character.
“One thing about me,” Klostreich said in the 2019 interview, “is that I’ve been blessed beyond blessed. The kids that I have coached for more than 40 years still come to my house, still talk to me and still hang out at my house.
“We have love for one another. We don’t talk to each other unless we say, ‘I love you.’ And that’s good. What’s wrong with that? I’ve been blessed with a lot of love.”
Not a second was wasted in the old-school, disciplined environment during the two- to three-hour practices and then 30-minute condition sessions.
“We would go into that room, lock the door and we would go two to three hours, sometimes 3 1/2 hours, balls-to-the-wall. No water breaks. … No water breaks. That’s what they wanted. It wasn’t me. That’s what they wanted. They were tough kids,” Klostreich said in the 2019 interview when the 40th anniversary of Sunnyside first state title was celebrated.
The number of individual state champions he coached at Sunnyside was 39.
Klostreich’s contributions to the sport were recognized nationally and locally.
He was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2007 with the Lifetime Service to Wrestling Award. His induction into the Arizona High School Athletic Coaches Hall of Fame was in 2001.
After leaving Sunnyside in 1989, he continued coaching in California and eventually Yuma, where he served as an assistant coach into his late 70s.
He is survived by a vast community of former athletes, colleagues, and family who revere him as the man who turned the southside neighborhood school into a world-class training ground for champions.
Sanchez was one of Klostreich’s most famous proteges. He assisted Klostreich from 1981–1989. Klostreich personally reached out to keep him in Arizona when Sanchez considered moving to New Mexico. Sanchez went on to lead Sunnyside to five wrestling state titles and two football state titles.
DeBerry was mentored within the system Klostreich built, serving as an assistant to Sanchez before taking over the program. DeBerry became the most successful coach in Arizona history, winning 15 team state championships and coaching multiple NCAA national champions.
Thom Ortiz, a standout on Klostreich’s 1984 championship team, went on to a successful collegiate career at Arizona State, helping the Blue Devils win the 1988 NCAA title. He later served as the head coach at Arizona State, where he won three Pac-10 championships.
Sam Portillo, recently inducted into the New Mexico Wrestling Hall of Fame, was a Sunnyside Class of 1985 standout wrestler under Klostreich who went to coach at Amphitheater and Desert View high schools. He also was a success as head coach at Silver High School in Silver City, N.M. He also served as a USA Wrestling coach on staffs for Olympic training camps, the Pan American Games, and World Cup events.
Joe Solorio, a member of Klostreich’s earliest teams (Class of ’77), credited Klostreich’s “sweatbox” practices for his own career success. He went on to coach at Pima Community College and is a fellow National Wrestling Hall of Fame inductee.
“The workouts we had in that room …,” Soloro said of the practice sessions under Klostreich. “I think they are illegal today. It was hot in there and we couldn’t leave the room.
“I remember one time I really had to go out to the bathroom. Coach let me go to the bathroom. They were practicing basketball in the gym. I laid down on the bleachers. There was a Jack in the Box cup there. I saw it and it was cold. I lifted it up and drank it. It was like a root beer or coke. Somebody had left it.”
Eric Larkin, an NCAA champion at Arizona State and a Dan Hodge Trophy winner, was mentored by coaches in the Klostreich lineage.
Nate and Nick Gallick, NCAA national champions at Iowa State, were products of the program built on Klostreich’s foundation.
Roman Bravo-Young, two time NCAA champion at Penn State, and Sergio Vega, who recently earned a national title as a freshman at Oklahoma State, are contemporary faces of the dynasty Klostreich started.
Eddie Urbano, a two-time state champion under Klostreich at Sunnyside, was one of the earliest symbols of dominance during the 1979-1980 seasons. Urbano was a two-time All-American at Arizona State at 150 pounds in 1984 and 1985, when he became the Sun Devils’ second NCAA champion in school history and the first since Curley Culp in 1967.
The success all comes from the image of Klostreich and the boot-camp atmosphere he started a year after he was let go as the football coach at Phoenix Carl Hayden because of reportedly an altercation stemming from somebody saying something negative about his players there.
The late Paul Petty, Sunnyside’s football coach at the time who was previously part of Klostreich’s staff at Hayden, convinced the powers-that-be at Sunnyside to hire the fiery coach to lead the wrestling program.
Many of Klostreich’s former wrestlers, including Ortiz and Portillo, believe the gym at Sunnyside should be named after the legendary coach.
“It’s long overdue,” Portillo said. “There’s no other coach in Tucson who has the success he had or built the kind of program that he built.”
During the 40th anniversary of Sunnyside’s first state title in 2019, Klostreich said he was especially fond of that team out of them many high-caliber teams he coached.
“One of the lessons I learned from the 1979 team that I still believe today is that you wrestle your matches the way you practice,” he said. “They proved that in order to succeed in sports you must surround yourself with good people and great coaches.
“We could have never done this without our families because next to God, family is No. 1.”
Funeral arrangements are pending.
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