During Tom McCann’s 42 years as head wrestling coach at Kearney High, the Bearcats achieved a standard of consistent excellence that netted state records for consecutive tournament victories, state tournament pins and points.
McCann has now been apart of Loper wrestling since the 2013 season and serves as one of several assistants for head coach Dalton Jensen. He retired from his KHS head coaching duties in February 2012.
KHS won 21 conference team championships, 14 district championships, one state championship, eight state runners-up and 29 top-10 finishes. Also including three years coaching in Colorado, McCann produced 34 state individual champions, 161 state runners-up and 362 state qualifier American Athletic Union (AAU) success was also a part of McCann’s resume.
The Maine exchange of Nebraska wrestlers was begun by Lincoln Southeast’s Mick Pierce. After two years McCann took over the Maine Exchange program and initiated the Hawaiian Exchange for Nebraska wrestlers. In 1973 he took a team to Romania for the first high school age wrestlers to compete behind the "Iron Curtain." He coached AAU teams in Mongolia, Russia, Bulgaria, Germany and Iran. Early in his career, he coached the Kearney High tennis teams to four top five state tournament finishes in five years.
A California native who wrestled at Adams (Colo.) State, McCann started his head coaching career at Mountain Valley High School in Saguache, Colo. He was a graduate assistant at ASU in 1968 when the Grizzlies won the school's first-ever NAIA national championship.
McCann is a member of the Adams State, Kearney High and Nebraska High School Halls of Fame.
