Avila Promotes Revier to Head Women’s Wrestling Coach

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The Avila University Department of Athletics is excited to announce that associate head wrestling coach Zach Revier has been elevated to the role of Avila’s head women’s wrestling coach, effective immediately.

“Zach is a guy who is always around and doing whatever he can to make our wrestling program better,” Avila University Director of Athletics Shawn Summe said. “To watch him take ownership of the women's program this year was awesome, and I thought we saw growth in our returners and growth in all our wrestlers as the season progressed. That helped set Zach apart from others to the point that when the job came open it was a no-brainer to install Zach in that role.”

“I would like to thank the entire hiring committee, especially our Athletic Director Shawn Summe, the administration, and the athletics staff for entrusting me with this role, and to thank my family for supporting me through this process,” Revier said. “I've been working with most of these girls for a couple years, had the opportunity to work with a lot of them over the last couple of weeks - they're getting excited, and I'm getting excited to make this transition, and separate the program as it deserves to be. We've got a lot of great, motivated women coming up through the program getting ready, and we’re excited to take this program into new territory."

Revier was an assistant coach on the inaugural Avila Wrestling staff in the 2021-22 season, and last season served as the associate head coach, working primarily with the women’s team while assisting with the men’s. Now, as Avila wrestling formally breaks into two separate programs, Revier, who previously served as the de facto head coach of the women’s team, now officially becomes the first head women’s wrestling coach in Avila history.

“I couldn't think of a better fit for our women's coach. He's very patient, he understands how to coach women. I'm excited to see where Zach takes the program,” said Eric Mateo, who last year served as an assistant coach along with Revier and last week was introduced as Avila’s next head men’s wrestling coach.

Avila became one of the first colleges in the KCAC to sponsor wrestling in spring 2021, with a pair of wrestling teams operating inside the general Avila Wrestling banner under the guidance of inaugural head coach Graham Karwath. With Karwath now departing Kansas City after two strong years of success for the brand new program, Avila will now feature two distinct teams – men’s wrestling and women’s wrestling – that will operate more like the Avila basketball and soccer programs do: each team will now run separately, with its own dedicated head coach (Mateo and Revier) at the helm, but will still work together to coordinate practices, duals, and team events, creating one cohesive Avila Wrestling culture.

“At the end of the day, the point was for both teams to have their own identity: the women's wrestling program and the men's wrestling program. I thought it was good to have one person in charge of each program,” said Summe, who orchestrated this change this summer. “The wrestlers will know who to talk to. They're with them every day, in practice, and it helps the athletes focus and know where to go.  Graham did a great job in his two years of building this program up, and he identified talent in Zach and Eric and brought them on staff. Many thanks to Graham and what he did for the program. Both of them coach for the right reasons. Both are focused on helping our student-athletes become better people, and helping them in all aspects of life, not just in wrestling, and I think that's important.”

“Even though it's essentially a different sport, with different training sessions, plans, schemes, all of that, a trench in Germany looks a lot like a trench in France,” said Revier, himself a U.S. Military veteran. “At the end of the day, we're all in the trenches together, we understand what the other side is going through, and we know that not a lot of other people would choose to go through a wrestling season. So we're going to be each other’s biggest supporters when it comes to match time, graduation, life events, and everything like that."

Fully in the trenches as an assistant coach and then last year as the program’s associate head coach under Karwath, Revier has been an instrumental piece in the great success Avila wrestling has sustained over its first two years as a program. Under Revier’s guidance, the Avila women have been receiving national votes consistently in each of the last two seasons, and qualified multiple wrestlers for the NAIA’s end-of-season competition both times, including national bids last season for Markayla Lottie and Byanca Cook in the first season the NAIA recognized women’s wrestling as an official championship sport.

That new status speaks to the rapid growth of wrestling – and specifically women’s wrestling – both nation and worldwide. Capitalizing on that growth, Revier, who has more experience in folkstyle and Greco wrestling from his days competing collegiately at Williams Baptist and in the professional circuits, immersed himself in the world of freestyle wrestling and women’s wrestling specifically, something that’s made him an essential piece of the Avila wrestling program over the last two years.

“Wrestling has been a pretty static sport for the last few decades, and with the expansion of women's wrestling it's been cool to see the sport get a new limelight,” Revier said. “And honestly, for our program specifically, in talking to a lot of our returners and the women joining our team this year, a lot of them have never been on team that's had a full roster before, and this year will be our first as a college program that runs a full lineup. They've put in a lot of work throughout their years of high school wrestling, and we've put in the work on our end to bring this program to this level, so it's going to be cool to see - not all the hard work because there's still plenty of work to do - but the hard work that's been put in so far, to see it start to pay off pretty early in the history of the program.”

Revier and the returning Eagle wrestlers have certainly put in that work over the last few months, and it’s already starting to pay dividends: Revier plans to bring approximately 20 new wrestlers into the women’s program, tripling the roster’s current size, as Avila plans to compete with a full slate of athletes for the first time in the program’s history.

"This is more their program than my program. I play a small role, I'm just the coach. They wear and live this much more than I do. That's been one of the biggest reasons why things will look different in the future than they do now,” Revier said. “We’re going to be 25, 30 deep next year, and that's more than we've had in the first two years collectively. And that's super exciting, and a lot of it is because the girls and myself have built up a good relationship, and have established trust among each other, and we're using that to help build our family.”

“Our teams are going to be practically the same size next season, 30ish on both, he crushed it,” Mateo echoed. “I think one of the things that sells recruits on coming to Avila is the team - the people currently a part of this program. We say it's a family, but we truly mean that here, and when recruits meet our athletes they get to know that. Ten years from now, you're not going to remember the technique you learned. Hopefully you got better in that moment, but you're going to remember more the time you spent with the people here, and that's one of the big selling points to come wrestle here. Our group as a whole is chasing one dream, and doing it together.”

“To see the growth from year one to year two was tremendous, but our roster is going to more than double on the women's side this year, and Zach has worked hard to recruit and bring in young women who want to come in and be a part of this program,” said Summe. “That's something that really set him apart - he's intent on building this program up, and he did a great job of taking ownership of it this year, even when he was an assistant.”

An Olivia, Minnesota native, Revier was a member of the junior national Greco team in 2009, and was a Minnesota state tournament entrant in 2011. Revier began his collegiate career at Ridgewater Community College in Willmar where he attained All-American status in 2016, before competing for two years at Williams Baptist University in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas, where he was a member of the 2017 Eagle team that finished fourth at NAIA Nationals.

Even though women’s wrestling was something fairly new to him before he came to Kansas City, Revier, a wrestling lifer, now counts women’s wrestling specifically as something he holds especially dear. His twin brother, Jacob, also a former college wrestler, helped begin the women’s wrestling program at his high school, and his younger sister, Vayda, is now a youth wrestler in her own right.

“By the time my sister's in college, this sport will have been around for a while. It's going to be more competitive, super tough. To be able to be part of that is awesome, and it's something that will never be taken away from us. It's a reason why I've focused on coaching the girls,” Revier said. “We all have our reasons why this sport means a lot to us, once we strap on those shoes, once we're on that mat, it's very hard to get us away from that environment, it sticks with us. And that's just one of the best things about this sport, just the camaraderie, the family sense that this sport creates.”

Revier’s third season at Avila – and his first season as Avila’s head coach – officially begins this month, with the 2023-24 women’s wrestling season slated to begin in October. For further details and information about this story, and about all of Avila’s 14 varsity athletic programs, contact Sports Information Director Tim Hackett.