Local legend Jeff Patch puts

the godfather of orland wrestling

If you expanded the above title and said Jeff Patch is the godfather of CIF Northern Section wrestling, you’d be just as accurate. When Patch came to Orland High in 1971, he immediately changed the face and direction of wrestling at the school. His model became so successful, other wrestling programs began to emulate it. Besides being a great coach and leader, Patch said, “You need to advertise your sport. The kids work too damn hard not to get recognition.” All of that results in attracting more kids to the program, and Patch instituted unconventional moves to get more athletes to join the ranks of Orland Trojan Wrestling.

Before Jeff Patch arrived in Orland, he wrestled in the Bay Area at College Park High School in Pacheco, California, a small town not unlike Orland in terms of numbers. Patch followed Chico State standout wrestler Mike Simpson, another

College Park wrestler, who later taught art and coached at Chico High School. However, Jeff Patch’s real journey began in Mexico.

Jeff’s dad was an engineer, and his work took him from the deserts of California to the deserts of Mexico, where Patch was raised and lived for seven years. Spanish was his first language, and this became significant later in his coaching career when he recruited many Spanishspeaking kids into his wrestling programs, first at Yuba City High School and, later, Orland. But before his high school teaching and coaching career began, he wrestled at Chico State from 1964 to 1967. At Chico, he won Far West Conference Championship honors and was well known as an excellent wrestler.

However, a “little thing” called the Vietnam War loomed after graduation in 1967. Feeling he had to continue the family tradition of being in the US Navy, Patch joined the United States Naval Reserves. By chance, and perhaps because of a college degree, this helped him avoid service in Vietnam. Of all the sailors in his barracks at Treasure Island in San Francisco, he and one other received orders other than Vietnam. “We were sitting on our numbers, the number each of us was assigned, and waited for our orders. I was sent to Alaska, to the Aleutians.” Patch thinks his degree helped, because he and the other sailor had each graduated from college.

After finishing two years of active duty, Patch came back to California, student taught for Mike Simpson in art at Chico High School, and was hired as an art teacher and coach at Yuba City High School. He became assistant to another College Park grad and Chico alum, Mickey Maxwell. When Maxwell became ill for a few weeks, Patch ran the program. It was then he decided he wanted to head his own program. A job opened up at Orland High School, and the real journey that changed wrestling forever began.

He started in the fall of 1971, and the wrestling program at a school of 500 students became one of the foremost in the Northern Section, routinely beating larger schools like Chico High, Pleasant Valley, and Paradise High, a school that became a longtime rival with many raucous and exciting dual meets. Even though tournaments are large, loud, and lengthy events with many schools, it is the dual meet that is the heart of high school wrestling.

“You need to get the bodies out,” said Patch. “Not just on the team but in the stands. You need to make the dual meet an event people want to attend.” The first step was advertising; he put announcements in the bulletin and newspaper. Then he designated a contingent of girls as stat keepers who handed out the medals at tournaments and cheered at dual meets. Wrestlers wore their colors at school on the day of a match and their jackets were festooned with medals. After the preliminary bouts, they would turn off the lights and spotlight the center of the mat for the varsity team to make it special. It worked, and Orland became Westside League champion over and over. They won section meets and placed ninth in the State in 1994, a tremendous accomplishment.

Jeff Patch is in the Chico State Sports Hall of Fame, the Orland Wrestling Hall of Fame, and the Glenn County Educators Hall of Fame. He has definitely cemented his place in Orland Sports History.

“You need to get the bodies out,” said Patch. “Not just on the team but in the stands. You need to make the dual meet an event people want to attend.”