Wrestling
Favorite athlete: Jason Nolf
Favorite team: Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Favorite memory competing in sports: Winning the State Championship
Most embarrassing thing that has happened while competing in sports: Pinning myself
Music on mobile device: Unpopular music – I like to find unique music not everyone listens to
Future plans: Go to college, Wrestle, Win World Cup and become a College Coach
Words to live by: “Life’s a garden, Dig it”
One goal before turning 30: Be a NCAA Champion
One thing people don’t know about me: I had two thumbs on one hand when I was born.
By Mary Jane Souder
It was a typical April weeknight in the life of Josh Stillings.
The Pennridge senior spent several hours at an offseason workout with his high school team at the Lion’s Den Wrestling Club. He didn’t leave when it was over but instead opted to stay to work with youngsters aspiring to one day follow in his footsteps.
And gigantic footsteps they are.
In March, Stillings became just the second state gold medalist in program history when he captured the title at 182 pounds at the PIAA 3A Wrestling Championships. He joins Dan Goetter, who won gold in 2005, as the lone Rams to earn that distinction.
Finishing atop the podium at Hershey capped a dazzling high school career that included three state medals and four consecutive trips to states, a first for the program.
Stillings also owns three Southeast Regional 3A titles, four District One East crowns and four Sectional titles. He earned Outstanding Wrestler honors at the SOL Continental Conference championships and the District One East Tournament. He is the first in school history to earn OW honors at the Southeast Regional championships. He will leave Pennridge second only to Kyle Gentile with 151 career wins. Included in those 151 wins are 47 pins and 28 tech falls.
It’s the stuff legends are made of, and Stillings could safely be called a high school legend. It would be easy for the Pennridge senior to rest on his laurels, and if he displayed even a trace of self-satisfaction after checking off the last of his high schools goals, it would be easy to understand.
But that’s not how Josh Stillings operates. A relentless worker, he’s already preparing for life at the next level, and the Drexel University recruit is a star who’s defined as much by his humility off the wrestling mat as his remarkable skills on it.
“Probably one of the best compliments you can give somebody, especially someone like him who’s had his success, is to stay humble, and Josh is definitely that,” Pennridge coach RP Norley said. “He is certainly one of the most humble kids I’ve ever met.”
JT Lewis, a volunteer assistant for the Rams, echoed a similar sentiment.
“Josh is a guy who’s very humble,” said the Rams’ assistant. “He has a very good ear and he listens very well. He also has an amazing endurance of being able to wrestle year round.
“He puts in a lot of work by himself. He knows what needs to be done. He does it all year long. He’s got a very good wrestling IQ. He’s basically at a level now where he could be a coach – that’s how much he knows about the sport.
“He’s so patient, and he’s always very kind. He would stay after practices and work with kids that were not as good as him. Believe me, he could easily be a coach, but he has a lot of wrestling to do before he’s completely on that side of things.”
Ask Stillings his dream job, and it is to coach at the Division I level. That might be a pipe dream for most, but Stillings is a student-athlete who sets lofty goals and then goes out and achieves them.
“Before I started high school, my club coach, Kurt Paroly, told me that my goals should be freshman year make it to states, then sophomore year place, junior year make it to the finals and senior year win it,” Stillings said. “That’s literally exactly what I did. It’s a little weird.”
Weird only for athletes not named Josh Stillings.
“He’s goal oriented,” Lewis said. “What’s the goal? The goal is to be a champion. He’s going to be a guy who sets himself apart.
“He’s going to try and be a national champion (in college), and I don’t see any reason why he can’t be.”
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Josh Stillings knew he wanted to wrestle before he ever stepped onto a mat.
“I never played basketball, but I played almost every sport,” he said. “I was really good at football when I was little.
“My parents didn’t really think much of wrestling, but I wanted to do it because I thought it was like being a Power Ranger, and I wanted to do that. I brought a flier home when I was in kindergarten because that’s where I heard about it, and they threw it in the trash. I remember digging it out of the trash, getting it and shoving it in their faces saying, ‘Come on, I want to do it.’ I thought I’d be good at it.”
Stillings persuaded his parents to rethink their position, but there was nothing in those early days to suggest he’d one day be a star.
“My first year I lost every match – I got pinned every single match,” he said. “I don’t really remember this, but my mom told me when I was younger, I would get pinned, and I would come off the mat crying, and she would say, ‘You know what, you don’t have to do this. You can do football,’ but I was like, ‘No, I love it,’ but in my crying voice.”
Stillings’ unwavering persistence to stick with wrestling paid dividends, although not immediately.
“My second year I won a match, and I remember winning the match and being like, ‘Okay, this is fun,’” he said. “My third year we went to a national tournament in Ohio called the Tournament of Champions.
“I wasn’t very good, but I was starting to get better. I lost my first match and then I won eight straight, and I got third. I beat the kid that I lost to in the wrestlebacks. After that I was like, ‘This is what I want to do.’”
Stillings received his first pair of wrestling shoes from coach Phil Barday, his first coach.
“He kind of got me into it, and my mom got really into it, so we enjoyed it together,” Stillings said. “I remember being in third grade and I went to this little tournament, and there was a club coach, Joe Erb, and he was looking for kids for his team.
“I wasn’t very good at the time, and he said he always saw something special in me. That definitely sparked my career a little bit, gave me confidence in myself as a little kid.”
It wasn’t long before Stillings was on the fast track to the top of his sport, but there were some speed bumps along the way, most notably in his first trip to the prestigious Beast of the East Tournament that features the best of the best.
“Freshman year I did really bad – I went 1-2,” Stillings said. “I remember crying in the back hallway. I was really upset with myself.”
While he may have been upset, Stillings – who went on to earn seventh and third place medals at Beast of the East in the years that followed - insists there was never a time he didn’t love the sport.
“I don’t know what I loved about it when I started, but I love it now basically because it’s just me out there,” he said. “I think I did like it because I didn’t have to depend on other people. It was my fault (if something went wrong).”
Stillings – whose 39 wins were the most in school history for a freshman - went on to earn a trip to the state tournament in Hershey in his first year on the varsity.
As a sophomore, Stillings captured fourth place in the state tournament and a year later advanced to the state final, finishing second to Mifflin County’s Trent Hidlay. He entered his final high school season with the kind of expectations that would cause some athletes to crumble.
Not Stillings.
“I don’t really feel much pressure,” he said. “I know my mom was really nervous. Everyone around me was really nervous, but I don’t really feel too much pressure when I wrestle. I think of it as a game, a sport.
“I didn’t really realize until after I won that I won the state title. It definitely felt really good because I got to share it with my coaches, friends and family. A lot of people were there, so it was good to bring it home.”
Norley says he’s been lucky to have high character athletes in the program.
“We’ve had really, really good kids come in the program with good character and good parents,” the Rams’ coach said. “Our program is pretty rigid. With their academics and everything, we make them walk a tight rope. All the kids are held to a pretty high standard.
“Josh is a little bit different. He was never in your face and real intense. He’s showing up, working hard and going to all the competitions. It’s just his life. Some kids before matches get fired up, put on headphones, and you can see them pacing back and forth. That’s just not Josh. He does this every day. It’s just what he does. You can tell before his matches he’s relaxed, he’s calm. It’s just another day.”
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Wrestling is a year-round sport for Stillings, who regularly studies videos of other wrestlers.
“I’ll try things I see in the practice room and sometimes I’ll try and make my own stuff up,” he said.
Stillings wrestles with SEPA on the club circuit, and in the summer, he wrestles at the PA Regional Training Center in Philadelphia.
“In the summer is definitely where I feel I improve the most,” Stillings said. “Not as many kids are wrestling in the summer, so I feel I’m gaining an edge on them.”
The Pennridge senior boasts a lengthy list of accomplishments at the national level, earning All-American recognition after a third place finish at NHSCA Nationals as a freshman. A year later, Stillings was the NHSCA National champion. He became the first double All-American in program history in Fargo, N.D., after finishing third in Greco-Roman and fourth in freestyle wrestling.
This past summer, Stillings earned 2017 Flo National All-American honors after finishing fourth. He was the 2018 Super 32 runner-up.
“I don’t remember the last time he’s taken a summer off from wrestling,” Lewis said. “And that’s the big goal – to get kids to try and do what he does.
“We try to get kids to do the offseason wrestling, lifting and stuff of that nature. He does it by himself. His mom (Rollie Stillings) has always been an encourager. She’s always been by his side helping him – whatever he needs, rides to places, but he’s been very self-motivated. It’s been a pleasure to see that kid grow and just get tougher and tougher.”
Ranked 11th nationally at 182 pounds, Stillings, who was a top 100 recruit for the Class of 2018, opted to take his talents to Drexel University.
“Me and my mom always talked about it – I wanted to go to a school that’s academically prestigious and use wrestling to get into a good academic school and get a degree, and Drexel is the perfect spot,” he said.
Stillings’ work on the Pennridge wrestling mats is finished, and leaving with him is his coach.
“I made the decision that this was my last season as head coach in May, so I knew going into the season this was it,” Norley said. “We could have put a lot of pressure on ourselves and on Josh because it was our last chance, but we didn’t. We decided to stay the course, enjoy every moment, stay present and be happy and grateful for the opportunities God gave us to compete and to coach and to step out there and have fun and do what we love. We just stayed focused on that, being grateful, being blessed, being humble, having fun, and it worked out.
“I had three kids before Josh that were ranked number one going into the tournament, and we should have won a state title on paper a couple of times now, but that’s the way it goes. Winning the PA State title is not a given. There are so many variables. Even when you’re ranked number one in the country, there’s no guarantee you’re going to win it. It’s so competitive.
“Having the number one seeds that we’ve had and coming up short and all the hard work, the sweat, the tears and the blood those kids and we coaches put in with them, it was heartbreaking. To know it was the last season and it was our last chance and we were in the finals last year, it was all mounting towards this. The stars kind of aligned that day as far as it being my last year and Josh doing what he did. That was a storybook ending. You couldn’t have scripted it much better.”
