2015 MSU Athletics Hall of Fame Class: Pat Milkovich
9/17/2015 12:00:00 AM | General
Michigan State will induct six new members into its Athletics Hall of Fame on Thursday, Sept. 17. In the fourth of a six-part series this week on msuspartans.com, online columnist Steve Grinczel profiles former two-time NCAA wrestling champion Pat Milkovich.
Sometimes, Pat Milkovich looks back at what he accomplished as a Michigan State wrestler and shakes his head in wonderment. Did he dream it? Is he simply inserting himself into the plot of a movie he once saw?
“How did I do that?,” Milkovich said from his home in Fort Meyers, Florida, where he’s a retired health and physical education teacher and the former wrestling coach at Florida Gulf Coast. “How did it happen? We have a magazine called Amateur Wrestling News and the editor called me and he says, ‘I’m looking at your history and you went from a walk-on to the Cleveland Hall of Fame, the Ohio Wrestling Hall of Fame, the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, which every college in the country has people in, and now you’re going into the Michigan State Athletics Hall of Fame.’ And he said, ‘It’s just an unbelievable story.’ ”
When it comes to improbable stories, Milkovich puts “Rudy” – the romanticized film about the Notre Dame football walk-on who fulfilled his dreams by playing on the kickoff team one time in one game – to shame.
As a boy, Milkovich wanted to be a figure skater, which didn’t go over too well in a household where his father, Mike, was a successful high school coach and older brothers would go on to wrestle in college on full-ride scholarships.
“I was one of those guys who when my father would say something, it just registered with me a little differently,” Milkovich said. “He’d say things like, “There are two things in this world that are easy to do. One is to be happy being average and the other is to quit when things get difficult.’
“So when I’d be running or doing an exercise, I’d go, ‘Gosh, I want to quit,’ and then I’d go, ‘No I can’t quit – that’s easy to do.’ People can always make an excuse, they can always blame somebody else, they can always be happy being average, but that wasn’t going to be me.”
That drive and determination turned Milkovich into the first four-time NCAA finalist in Big Ten history, a three-time Big Ten champion (1972, ’74 and ’76) and two-time national champ.
Milkovich had the blood lines – older brother Tommy was the No. 1 recruit in the nation when MSU wrestling coach Grady Peninger signed him to a full-ride scholarship – but not the obvious talent to set him apart.
“I always looked at myself as just above average because I worked hard just to be average,” Milkovich said. “I’d watch my brothers and other people, and my dad would teach a technique, and the more gifted guys in the room would pick it up in 15-20 repetitions. Three, four, five days later, two weeks later, I’m still working on it. But maybe that was to my advantage because the work ethic and discipline it took just to be average really helped me become better than average.”
Milkovich’s parents emigrated from Yugoslavia. They couldn’t speak English at first and put all their energy into making a better life for Pat and his five siblings.
“It was a tough life for them,” Milkovich said. “They put a very high value on food, you don’t throw away anything. It’s not like today. My dad would say, ‘That’s all you’re getting to eat, OK, if you don’t like it, wait until tomorrow and you’ll get something else.’ ”
When Milkovich wasn’t allowed to quit wrestling in junior high in favor of the ice rink, he went on a mission.
Milkovich came to East Lansing at the age of 17 with a promise from Peninger – the only college coach to show sincere interest in him, and then mainly because of his pedigree – that if MSU would “consider” giving Milkovich a scholarship if he proved himself.
“I kind of realized very early in life that you get limited opportunities to do certain things, and once those opportunities are gone you never get another shot at it; they’re gone forever,” Milkovich said. “I looked at it as, my freshman year I have one chance here to be a national champion. I wasn’t looking ahead to my senior year, this was my freshman year.
“I listened to people my entire life who said, ‘If I would have done this or done that I could have been this or been that.’ I did it myself in my early years of competing and it’s not a good feeling, so I’m going to do everything I can to put in that position where I can look back and say I did everything I could. Maybe it’s not always the award that’s the most important thing; it’s who you develop into as a person because of the process.”
In 1972, as an 18-year-and-three-month-old walk-on in the 126-pound weight class, Milkovich became the youngest NCAA champion in history, a distinction he still owns, and first freshman to win a national title in 25 years. Tommy also won the championship in the 142-pound division and he and Pat became the first brother tandem who weren’t twins to win titles in the same year.
Peninger came through with a scholarship, but Milkovich missed the ’72-73 season with an injury and redshirted. He returned in ’73-74 to become a top seed as a sophomore at the ’74 NCAA Championships where he won his second title with a combined score of 41-10 in five matches. The top seed as a junior in ’75, Milkovich fell in the championship match to Penn State’s John Fritz in overtime (5-5, 3-1). Milkovich moved up a weight class, to 134, as a senior, but while he won his third Big Ten crown, fell as the No. 2 seed in the NCAA final to No. 1 seed Mike Frick, 7-4.
One of two four-time All-Americans at MSU, Milkovich ended his Spartan career with a 90-8-4 record for a winning percentage of .902.
“From the minute I stepped on that campus, I was in love with it,” Milkovich said. “I was walking on hallowed ground – that was what it was like to me. I looked at the pictures of the past athletes, coaches and administrators and I’d go man, I used to see some of these guys on TV and I’m in the same hallways they were in.
“I’d look at their uniforms, I’d look at the wrinkles in them, I’d look at how they tied their shoes in the picture and say, ‘Man, that guy was a national champion, that guy was a first-team All-American.’ I just thought it was so cool.’ I have a great reverence for all those people who came before me and pave the way for people like me. They had those high standards and high benchmark and I wondered if I ever could do that.”
Mike Milkovich is 94 and lives in Marathon, Florida. When Pat told him about being inducted into the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame, “He cried,” Pat said. “We both cried. I’m not the guy who should be there. It should be all my other brothers. That’s what’s so weird about it. It’s incredible.
“Of all the halls of fame I belong to, this is my crown jewel. This is the most important one to me."