Edward C. Gallagher

Gallagher earned a degree in electrical engineering from Oklahoma A&M in 1909. Upon graduation, he stayed at the Stillwater school, where he served as track coach. In 1913, he left Oklahoma A&M for Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas, where he coached all sports.

He held the head football coach position at Baker for the 1913 and 1914 seasons. His football coaching record at Baker was 8 wins and 8 losses.[1][2]

In 1915, he returned to Oklahoma A&M as athletic director. During the 1914–15 school year, Oklahoma A&M started its wrestling program, with A.M. Colville as coach. That first season, the team wrestled only one dual meet, and lost to the University of Texas. In the 1915–16 school year, Gallagher named himself wrestling coach while remaining athletic director. The team again had only one dual meet, and again lost to Texas. However, by the second year, Gallagher's wrestlers competed in three duals, winning two (against Emporia State and Texas) and tying with Arkansas. The team did not compete during World War I.

In the years immediately after World War I, Gallagher's Oklahoma A&M wrestlers—by now known as the Cowboys—never had a losing season. In the eleven-year period from the 1919–20 through the 1930–31 seasons, the team had 70 straight wins. The streak was broken in the last dual meet of the 1930–31 season against cross-state rival, the University of Oklahoma Sooners. During the rest of the 1930s, the Cowboys lost only one other dual meet (at Southwestern Oklahoma State in the 1936–37 season) and had three ties.

In 1928, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) held its first national college wrestling championship. At that first NCAAs—hosted by Iowa State—Gallagher's wrestlers won four of the seven titles. In the thirteen years of NCAA championships with Gallagher as coach, 22 individual Cowboy wrestlers won a total of 37 NCAA titles.

From 1924 through 1936, fifteen of Ed Gallagher's wrestlers qualified for U.S. Olympic teams, along with Earl McCready competing for his native Canada at the 1928 Olympics, and George Chiga wrestling for Canada in 1936.

Four Cowboy Olympic wrestlers coached by Gallagher earned medals. Bobby Pearce and Jack VanBebber both won gold medals at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. At the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Frank Lewis won the gold, while teammate Ross Flood earned silver.

Ed Gallagher served as honorary coach for the 1936 U.S. Olympic team.

Using his engineering knowledge, Gallagher studied leverage, and how it applied to wrestling. Gallagher selected over 400 wrestling holds, and expected each of his wrestlers to master about 200.

Gallagher openly shared what he learned with others. He and his teams often conducted wrestling demonstrations before or after dual meets. In 1939, he and his Cowboy wrestlers demonstrated holds in a three-page photo-article in Life magazine. He also wrote two instructional books, "Amateur Wrestling" and "Wrestling."

The following table shows Gallagher's wins as coach at Oklahoma A&M: