This is one in a series of articles on Slippery Rock University graduates who have moved on to athletic careers elsewhere.It all started as a joke.Jack Spates stood five feet tall and weighed 90 pounds as a sophomore at Smithton (NY)High School when a couple of friends signed him up for the wrestling team."I was so small. ... They were playing a practical joke on me,"Spates said. "In the end, I guess the joke was on them."Spates went on to win a New York state championship, place third in the country and become a high school All-American. He went on to Slippery Rock University, recording a 118-8 record there and winning a NCAAtitle.Now he's sporting a 307-90-8 overall record as a college head wrestling coach and guided the University of Oklahoma to a third-place finish at nationals last season.Spates was named NCAAWrestling Coach of the Year for his efforts in 2006."The goal now is to win the national championship,"Spates said. "We've done just about everything else."Head coach at Oklahoma since 1993, Spates has led the Sooners to a top-three national finish in four of the past five years. His teams have won Big 12 titles twice in the past six years."It's Oklahoma State, Minnesota, then us," he said. "That's been the pecking order in college wrestling for the past five years."Not a bad track record for somebody who knew nothing about the sport when his high school buddies signed him up for the team."The coach approached me and asked how serious I was about wrestling since my name was on the sheet,"Spates said. "I explained that my friends put my name there and I only weighed 90 pounds. I figured I'd get killed out there."Once he explained to me about the weight classes and the sport in general, I was intrigued enough to give it a try. Before I knew it, wrestling was my passion."Spates insists wrestling is the greatest sport in the world."It's a sport for all shapes and sizes,"he said. "It's an art, a science in which you can create an unlimited number of moves on the mat, yet it's true hand-to-hand combat at the same time."Current Slippery Rock High School coach Fred Powell, a former SRUwrestling coach, recruited Spates to The Rock.To this day, Spates credits Powell for much of his mat development."Coach Powell has always been a great technician and he taught me how to be a learner,"Spates said. "SRUwas such a small school, yet we competed with and succeeded against the nation's best."My experiences there taught me not to accept limitations."A member of the Slippery Rock Athletic Hall of Fame, Spates began his coaching career as an assistant at Baptist Bible College in 1975 and helped the program win more than 70 percent of its matches and six conference titles.When he left there in 1981, Spates figured he was done with coaching."I took a job in sales, but I just didn't like it. I wasn't happy," he said.Despite having a wife and four children, Bates accepted an assistant wrestling coaching position at the University of Pittsburgh for less money.He helped the Panthers post their first winning season in five years, then became an assistant coach with Army, where he helped elevate the Black Knights to a best-ever No. 13 wrestling ranking nationally.Then came Spates' first head coaching position at Cornell. The program offered no wrestling scholarships when he got there. When he left there five years later, Cornell was ranked 10th in the country, won consecutive Eastern Championships while crowning nine individual Eastern champions.When Spates took the Oklahoma reins in 1993, the Sooners' average finish nationally was 23rd the previous three years. Spates has since developed 22 All-America wrestlers there.Despite his successes on the mat and coaching others in the sport, Spates' personal wrestling highlights come from his sons.His oldest son, Jeremy, became an Oklahoma high school state champion while his other son, Justin, became a state champion in Pennsylvania and was ranked No. 1 nationally at 119 pounds.Jeremy Spates is now an assistant on his father's staff while Justin Spates, who had a feature role in the film Reversal, is trying his hand at acting.Spates also has two daughters, Jessica and Jenilyn."I guess my life was set up by that practical joke all those years ago,"Spates said. "I'm just glad those guys had a sense of humor."