Inductees
Dennis DeLiddo
Year: 2015
Gender: Male
About Dennis:
At Fresno City College, Dennis DeLiddo placed fifth in the State Championships. In his two years at Fresno State, he was twice a CCAA runner-up.
DeLiddo coached at Clovis High School where he was Coach of the Year five times with five Section Championships, three state championships, and a record of 145-7-1 for a winning percentage of .951.
In 23 seasons of coaching at Fresno State, Dennis has taken a once struggling program and turned it into a national powerhouse. He’s done it the only way he knows how — through hard work and dedication. In 1981, he took over the program that had not seen a winning season in over a decade. It didn’t take him long to shift the focus from simply posting wins to grabbing conference titles and national rankings.
Under his reign, Fresno State has captured 11 Top 25 NCAA team finishes, 10 of them from 1992-2002. While in the Western Athletic Conference, the Bulldogs won seven straight championships from 1993-99. Dennis’ highlights include being named WAC Coach of the Year four times. He earned his 200th win in 1995 and reached 300 against CSU-Fullerton in 2014.
He sent a school-record eight wrestlers to the NCAA Championships (he has sent seven wrestlers five other times) while winning another WAC Championship in 1994. In 1993, DeLiddo was runner-up for the National Coach of the Year award when he led Fresno State to a best-ever eighth place finish in the NCAA and its first WAC title. The previous year Fresno State seized its third Top 25 NCAA finish and racked up a 19-1 dual meet record. His first conference title came in 1995, his fourth year as coach, when Fresno State was a member of the Pacific Coast Athletic Association. Dennis was twice selected as PCAA Coach of the Year.
The 1999 season saw DeLiddo guide his team to their seventh consecutive WAC Championship, and he enjoyed his first NCAA Champion in Stephen Abas at 125 pounds. His career record of 304-165-3 makes him the winningest coach in Fresno State history. In 1996 DeLiddo was honored when he was asked to be an assistant coach for the U.S. Olympic wrestling team. Fresno State set a West Coast Conference attendance record with 9,750 fans in a dual match against second-ranked Iowa State in 2004. He has coached 27 All-Americans and 55 individual conference champions.