Former UW-Whitewater coach Tim Fader tells his story

Imagine you're a college wrestling coach who, after ten years at his school, had won a string of conference titles, then taken your program to a second-place finish in the team standings at the 2014 NCAA Division III Wrestling Championships, the school's highest placement ever. Your team could claim five All-Americans, including two who made it into the finals. For those accomplishments, you were named Coach of the Year by a leading amateur wrestling website. Then, months after these honors, you find yourself unemployed, unable to find any coaching position within college wrestling.

You'd say it sounds like a nightmare. But it's waking reality for Tim Fader, former University of Wisconsin-Whitewater head wrestling coach who experienced "non-renewal" regarding his reporting of an alleged sexual assault -- quickly recanted by the victim -- which took place Easter weekend in 2014.

How could this happen? InterMat sought to find out the story behind the story ... by contacting coach Fader himself.

Meet Tim Fader

Tim Fader was born in Ida Grove, Iowa, in the northwest part of the state, but grew up in Rochelle, Illinois, in the north-central portion of the Land of Lincoln, a bit more than an hour west of Chicago on I-88, the Ronald Reagan East-West Tollway. His father Pete, a former wrestler at Cedar Rapids' Coe College in the late 1960s, was a teacher and wrestling coach at Rochelle Township High School.

"I had an OK career in high school," said Fader, who quickly followed up by saying, "I was recruited by some Division I schools but didn't think I was Division I material." It was only in a quick follow-up, fact-checking interview that, when asked, Fader admitted he had been a finalist at the Illinois high school state championships.

"The very last week of high school, I got a call from Kevin Puebla (then head wrestling coach) of Augustana College," said Fader, referring to the Division III school to the west of Rochelle, in Rock Island, Illinois. "We'll struggle at first, but we will become a great team."

"By the time I graduated, we were a top five program."

Fader graduated from Augustana with a bachelor's degree in both Business Administration-Finance, and Accounting in 1991. What he didn't mention in his interview with InterMat was that he graduated summa cum laude (among the top scholars at his school), named Augustana Top Scholar-Athlete, and was a two-time GTE (now Verizon) COSIDA First Team Academic All-American. Nor did he talk about his individual accomplishments on the mat, as a three-time NCAA qualifier, and two-time NCAA All-American at 142 pounds. He also didn't say anything about being a two-time team captain, or that he was named the team's MVP ... all according to his official coach's bio at the UW-Whitewater wrestling website.

Fader stayed in the Quad Cities after graduation. "I took a position in Moline as a consultant, but, at 3:30, I felt the urge to be back in the wrestling room," Fader disclosed. "I worked things out with my job to be able to go back to Augustana to help coach. Did that for two years."

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Former UW-Whitewater coach Tim Fader tells his story