It wasn’t difficult to define Dave Icenhower.
Long-time friend and coaching colleague Eric Hamilton knew, like many, that Icenhower’s moniker was his identity.
“He connected with all the people,” Hamilton said. “He was never young or old. He was just Ice.”
Icenhower died of cancer at age 66 on Oct. 25. But for his entire life close friends and even acquaintances only had to refer to “Ice” and the reference was understood. The utterance of those three letters immediately brought the man to mind. It must have been that way for a lot of people—the line into his remembrance services snaked out the door and around the block.
He was not only one of the most successful college wrestling coaches in NCAA history, but a guy whose immense popularity was heightened by his slick sense of humor, loyalty to friends and the ability to relate to people on all different levels.
Those character traits helped Icenhower, who resided in Robbinsville the latter part of his life, become one of just four college coaches in any division to win more than 500 matches. He went 535-80-4 at Trenton State College/The College of New Jersey and is second all-time in NCAA Division III victories. He guided five Lions teams to NCAA Division III national championships, and produced countless All-Americans and wrestlers who went on to successful post-college lives.
Robbinsville head coach Rich Gildner—who wrestled for Icenhower from 1999 to 2003 and then coached his son Jared with the Ravens—feels all of that is just window dressing compared to the essence of the man himself.
“I think what a lot of people on the outside wouldn’t really get is the kind of person he was, moreso than the coach,” said Gildner, a successful coach in his own right. “The wins and losses were great. It was nice to be able to have All Americans and national champs. But for him, it was more about teaching us how to become good men, and how to do things the right way and how to treat people. Those are the things a lot of us who wrestled for him took from him.”
And throughout his massively successful career, Icenhower had ways of not letting the pressure of the job overwhelm him. Chris Holcombe wrestled under Icenhower two decades prior to Gildner, and he took that trait with him when he went on to coach at Steinert.
“One of the things he showed me,” Holcombe said with a laugh, “is that, you know, sometimes you just got to laugh, things are so messed up. He used to do this thing where he’d throw up his hands and go ‘Aaahhhhh!’ and then just shake his head and laugh. My first instinct would be to rip you a new one, but I would find myself doing (what Icenhower did) a lot of times. It kept you sane.”
Icenhower did like to laugh, often at other people’s expense as he told a story about them that featured his famous lowering and shaking of the head with that unmistakable smirk. But no one cared about being his victim, nor did they care when he took the opposite approach to their point of view. Hamilton said Icenhower often forced him to view things from a different perspective, intentionally or not.
“Everybody liked him because he was blunt,” he said. “He didn’t always agree with me. But it was a different perspective. And he didn’t always throw it in your face and give you attitude with it. It was just what he thought and it gave you something to think about.
Hamilton and Icenhower met in 1975 when they became graduate-assistant coaches for Trenton State football and wrestling, respectively. They were roommates that year with Joe Dowling, another football GA. All three met their wives—all sorority sisters—at Trenton State. Icenhower was the “old man” of the trio, as he was five years older.
“But he never looked it and never acted it,” Hamilton said.
Icenhower arrived in Ewing by way of Norfolk, Virginia, where he was born, and Lehigh University, where he went to college. He spent time in the U.S. Navy as a Lieutenant JG and was also athletic director and wrestling coach at the Naval Academy Preparatory School.
Icenhower took over the Lions’ wrestling program from Mike Curry, a lifelong friend, in 1976, and Hamilton got the football job in 1977. It was the start of a new breed of young, energetic coaches hired by Athletic Director Roy Van Ness, which led to massive, nationwide athletic success at the college in the 1980s and 90s.
Icenhower led the way, guiding the wrestlers to the first NCAA Division III national championship in school history in 1979.
“The thing about Ice is that he came in and took that program and started running with it right away,” Hamilton said. “Back then, Division III wrestling, at least in New Jersey, everybody was kind of like “What’s that?” He seized the opportunity.”
It was the start of an incredible run that would go for 35 years until Icenhower stepped down in 2011. His style was not that of a raving mad man in the wrestling room, but more analytical.
“He was fairly low key,” Holcombe said. “He knew the kind of guys who would be successful at (TCNJ) were more of ‘putting the pieces together’ kind of guys. He got everybody in the room, and it was like he just put it in the pot. He was designing the workouts.
He didn’t get on his wrestlers’ backs, but if someone’s timing was off or his positioning not quite right, he would quietly take him to the side and talk about it.
“He had a way where he would look at what you were doing and go right to the heart of what the problem was,” Holcombe said. “He’d say, ‘You gotta do this,’ and when you started doing it, you’d get better. It was something you would never figure out yourself, and he’d look at you for five minutes and he’d fix it.”
High pressure was not Icenhower’s way in coaching or recruiting, and it helped him more often than not. When Gildner was at Southern Regional High School, his wrestling team took two trips to TCNJ to discuss the wrestling program with Icenhower.
Gildner was torn between wrestling and football and finally opted for football at Monmouth. When he told Icenhower, the coach gave him sincere good luck wishes. After things didn’t work out, he recalled that conversation and how classy and supportive Icenhower was, transferred to TCNJ and became a wrestling captain his senior year.
As the years went on, Icenhower remained youthful in a profession that tends to age people, and he would sometimes say that coaching kept him young by dealing with young people.
“Ice was the perpetual young guy up until he finished coaching,” Hamilton said. “His coaching style didn’t really change. His energy and enthusiasm for the sport, for the kids, never waned.”
Nor did his ability to remain “one of the guys” despite his spectacular success. Icenhower never liked to flaunt his success or talents.
“He’ll tell you he went to Lehigh and barely got by, but Icenhower was sharp, he was a very smart man,” Hamilton said. “He had a handle on things. He had a good business acumen, and he parlayed all those skills into recruiting and his program, running his camps and things like that.”
Hamilton added with a laugh, “Ice just didn’t want you to know how smart he really was. That would put him in a whole different echelon of people he would have had to hang around with.”
No matter who the person was, though, Icenhower made them feel comfortable. He could go 10 years without seeing someone, and at the next spur-of-the-moment meeting he would have the conversation churning as if he had just seen that person a week ago.
“It was always good to see him,” Holcombe said. “You’d always pick up where you left off with him. That’s how the relationships were with him.”
Gildner agreed.
“Every person he ever met, he could tell them everything about them—it would be, ‘How’s your mom? How’s your brother?’” he said. “He had that personality that he could instantly connect with people. He made you feel whatever was going on in your life was important. To him, whoever it was and whatever you were talking about, it seemed like it was the most important thing in the world to him.”
Icenhower and his effervescent wife Nancy—a legend in her own right who always makes people laugh—started out in Lawrence before moving to Robbinsville. Their oldest son Dave wrestled at Lawrence High, and their daughter Christie was a diver for the Cardinals, while youngest son Jared wrestled and played lacrosse for the Ravens.
Icenhower helped get Gildner his physical education teaching job at Robbinsville, and Gildner took over as head wrestling coach a year later in 2007. He picked Icenhower’s brains whenever he needed help, and soon after he got the job, he got to coach Jared.
Despite his vast knowledge of the sport, Icenhower never once tried to tell Gildner how to handle his son, who had an extremely successful two-sport career.
“As a coach, a lot of the times a lot of parents want to give their two cents,” Gildner said. “Dealing with Ice, he’s one of the only parents you want his two cents. You’re gonna call him for help. For the most part, he would kind of sit there at matches and wouldn’t say much. He would yell out a couple of things, but he wouldn’t try and influence him in any ways.”
Hamilton, who has raised his own large family, watched Icenhower take to parenthood like he took to coaching. He never pushed his sons to wrestle, but they did so after being around it for so long. Icenhower also had a great partner in Nancy, a counselor at West Windsor-Plainsboro and now at Hun, who Hamilton said “understood the athletic world and understood the pitfalls that an athlete could face at school.”
The Icenhowers’ world expanded when Christie began diving and Jared played lacrosse. The spectrum became more than a wrestling mat.
“Between wrestling and diving and lacrosse, they were always on the road,” Hamilton said. “It was a unique dynamic to watch Dave gravitate from wrestling to diving and lacrosse, which we had at the college so he could speak to it as an administrator, as a coach and as a parent.”
Icenhower took complete interest in his children and when Robbinsville High began to host county and region tournaments, the organizers had no problem inviting him in on the planning. Much like he did with wrestlers, Icenhower knew how to improve events.
“Any good idea anyone else had was instantly better when he put his two cents in,” Gildner said. “We’d have guy figuring things out, and he’d say ‘You know what, just do this,’ and he was right. He always had the answer.”
Gildner saw those same traits coaching his son.
“The biggest thing they’re similar with is kind of the way they sat back and took in the whole picture before they got involved in the conversation,” he said. “They view the whole situation before they say anything.”
Hamilton completely agreed, saying that “Ice was a man of few words, but the words he said, he meant. He wasn’t telling you what he thought you wanted to hear, he was telling you what he thought, because you asked him.
“And I’ll tell you what, if he was your friend, you had a friend for life. He always had your back.”
Gildner came to understand that as early as high school, which is why he never talks about Icenhower in terms of numbers.
“Everyone knows the All Americans and the championships, but that wasn’t even close to the person he was,” Gildner said. “I just wish more people had known how much of an impact he has had on so many people’s lives.”
They probably will, with good friends like Gildner, Hamilton, Holcombe and thousands of others left to tell the tales.
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