Growing up Amy

Steve Amy (right) has been reunited with his brother, Kevin (left) in his first year in the Tigers' corner at Princeton High School. Growing up, Steve would team up with their younger brother, Keith, for their family squabbles at home. (BCR photo//Kevin Hieronymus)

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Steve Amy started wrestling at age 3 and by 4 was taking his mom down to the kitchen floor.

Amy, the first-year head coach at Princeton High school, became one of the state’s most elite wrestlers, winning three state titles with a runner-up finish for Rockridge High School in Taylor Ridge.

His brothers, Kevin, two years behind, and Keith, five years behind, followed in his footsteps, each also wrestling their way to state. All three boys also played football for their dad’s Rockets' football team.

That’s the only way their parents, Rick and Kay Amy of Illinois City, would have it.

Rick coached Rockridge football for 28 years, 11 as head coach, and is coaching his 33rd and perhaps final year with the Rockets’ wrestling program. He coached all three sons in both sports along the way.

Kay grew up in a house of a basketball coach and a school teacher and said, “I was raised in the schools, so I guess that’s what I did with my kids, too.”

Mom was the rock of the family, and still is, Steve said. Rick said he could have never done his coaching career without her.

She took the boys to the youth tournaments and coached from the sidelines because Rick was busy with the high school team. She became well adept at coaching from the corner and running a video camera at the same time.

“I figure that’s my job. You got kids; you take care of them,” she said.

Mom would also be the one the boys would turn to when they thought Dad was too hard on them.

“I was the one that heard it,” she said.

Rick said he tried to separate his dual roles as dad and coach.

“I’d tell them at school, I’m being a coach now. At home, I’m being a dad,” he said. “There’s a fine line. If I’d jump Steve’s butt in practice, he’d come home and tell Mom.”

Rick also coached summer softball when the boys were little, and the girls on the team would help out babysitting for the coach by passing the boys down the bench.

To save the living room furniture from being wrecked, the Amys threw an old mat from the high school in the family’s toy room in the basement and let the boys have at it.

“If there’s no blood, they’re not hurt,” Kay said.

Boys will be boys, and the wrestling matches often turned into fights. They had their battle lines drawn, and Kevin, being the middle child, would be the odd man out.

“They usually teamed up on me,” said Kevin, a PHS assistant coach.

“Kevin and Keith would fight, and Steve would pick Keith’s side. And vice-versa, Keith would pick Steve’s side. Kevin was always the odd-man out there,” Kay said. “They’re all good friends, now. That’s all that matters.”

Kay was always being asked why her kids were so good at sports.

“I said because they’re with it all the time. I said, your kids know everything to know about a tractor, a combine, that kind of stuff. My kids know absolutely nothing about that. They’re dad knows sports; that’s all they know.”

Of the three boys, Rick said Steve seemed to be drawn to wrestling the most. The Amys have a picture of him out on the wrestling mat at 18 months wrestling his monkey. A newspaper picture captured him wearing his headgear ready for battle.

Rick said Steve would run out to the mat to wrestle during breaks during his high school meets. His brothers were more interested playing with coloring books or other toys.

“The only way I could spend time with Dad in the winter months was through wrestling,” Steve said. “l learned to love it. Actually, I loved it from Day 1.”

When Kevin came along, Steve figured he had a new wrestling partner. Kevin was not even a week old, laying in his crib, when the Amys heard Steve and some commotion going on in the baby’s room.

“I heard Steve, yelling, "Takedown, two,’” Kay said. “I came running from the other room, saying, ‘No, no you can’t do that. Well you said I could wrestle him, and I said, ‘Not yet. He’s got to get a little older. Then you can wrestle him.’”

“I told him he had to go back to his monkey,” Rick said.

Since his little brother wasn’t ready to wrestle yet, Steve turned to mom. She made the mistake of asking him what he learned at the little kids clinic when he was 4.

“I said what’d you learn today ... ‘double-leg takedown.’ I said, ‘Well, show me, and I was on the floor. I’ve been on the floor lots of time,” she said with a laugh. “You know how wrestlers are, they can’t keep their hands to themselves. They always want to wrestle.”

Rick recalls the moment with a laugh, saying his wife “was on her butt, just like that.”

Of the three boys, Steve had the most natural ability. “The other two had to work more at it,” Kay said.

When Rick would break down football film, Steve would often watch alongside him. Steve would later tell his dad there was something wrong with TV when they watched Bears games because “it won’t stop.”

“I figured out it was because every time we watched film, we’d go back and forth and back and forth to look at something. The Bears game never stopped,” Rick said.

Rick’s proud to see Steve follow in his footsteps, having coached wrestling at Lincoln College and now in his first year at PHS. He said he knew by the seventh grade he wanted to coach.

“I’m lucky to get a job where I’m kind of coaching all day long with strength conditioning and athletic PE,” he said.

“I got into the teaching profession, so I could coach. I love doing that and that led into our family. I can’t see him not coaching,” Rick said.

The Amys have counted about  10 coaches on Kay’s side of the family.

Steve wasn’t the first Amy to coach at PHS. Kevin was volunteer assistant under Randy Swinford, recruited from his day job as a lineman for the city of Princeton by PHS coach Jason Bird. The brothers are having a great time together.

He knows exactly what I want done and the moves I’m showing,” Steve said. “He’s helping out with Tiger Town and with him down there, they’re going to know what exactly what we’re going to do at high school.”

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