Baylor coach Schaack Van Duesen talks with Stuart Doster during the 2011 TSSAA State Wrestling Championships at the Williamson County Agricultural Exposition Arena in Franklin, Tennessee.

Schaack Van Deusen doesn't own a cell phone and probably never will. It will be more difficult to find him, though, when the current school year ends.

He recently followed through on a personal plan, announcing he would retire from Baylor after 35 years in the school's drama department and as an assistant wrestling coach.

"I had planned on retiring at the same time my daughter [Sarah] graduated. I've coached and directed for 40 years, and that seems a nice round number," he said. "I'm going to play golf, raise my fourth-grade daughter and be the chauffeur [to and from Baylor] when she gets to the sixth grade.

"I'm going to miss it a lot, but quite frankly I wanted to go out on top of my game. I was a huge baseball fan as a kid, and it always disturbed me to watch my heroes stay in the game too long."

Van Deusen, 68, was at Notre Dame for five years before going to Baylor. He has been a hero to countless youngsters.

"I discovered that the wrestling mat was a great teaching tool," he said. "You got to ask kids to do far more than they thought they were capable of, and being around young people has kept me young."

Doug Dyer, a heavyweight state champion for Baylor in 1978, said Van Deusen "knew how to push people's buttons, and if you got too big for your britches he'd cut your feet out from under you. Humility was a big part of his game."

A recent Red Raider gave similar testimony.

"He's intense and he was never afraid to tell you how he felt," offered Matthew Cate, who won his first state title last weekend. "I had many a chewing. I think all of us have had our fair share. And he was big about class -- no showboating or being demonstrative about a referee's call. Just get the job done.

"He demanded that we be respectful on and off the mat. He wanted you to beat your opponent but to beat him with class."

Ooltewah coach Wendell Weathers has faced Van Deusen teams as both a wrestler and a coach. As a Red Bank wrestler, he was among the numerous athletes who went to Baylor for some of the Red Raiders' infamous pre-state-tournament workouts.

"He ran some of the most intense practices during state-tournament week," Weathers said. "In the past 35 years Baylor wrestlers have always been in the right places at the right times doing the right things, and that is Schaack Van Deusen to the core."

Opposing coaches also think often of Van Deusen as a tactician and one of the premier scouts in the sport.

"As others have said, he was probably best at laying out a strategy to win a particular match," said Al Miller, who has been a head coach and an assistant at Cleveland High. "I know one of my biggest worries was to face a Baylor wrestler in the first round of the [pre-divided] state tournament. I worried about the time that Schaack had to prepare a plan to defeat my wrestler."

Scouting and preparation were second nature to Van Deusen.

"I was fascinated with strategy, scouting and preparation," he said. "Like what we do at Baylor -- we prepare individuals for individual matches. There's a lot of homework in that, but it was happy homework."

Ashley Brooks, a former Baylor athlete who headed programs at City and Lookout Valley, always knew what his wrestlers -- including state champions Tim Voiles and Dusty Griffith -- were going to face against Baylor competitors.

"My guys always got their toughest matches because Schaack had them scouted so well," Brooks said. "He was such a master at having Baylor prepared, you knew you had to bring your 'A' game or you were going to get your you-know-what handed to you."

That was Van Deusen's trademark from his time on Lookout Mountain playgrounds where he was tutored by Buck Stamps through his letter-winning years as a Baylor football and baseball player and wrestler and his career as an assistant to legendary Major Luke Worsham, Jim Morgan and Ben Nelson.

Current coach Nelson pointed up at the wrestling-room wall where the program's championship banners hang and said, "Every time Baylor's had a top-two finish, he's been a part of it."

That's 21 traditional or state duals titles and 80 state champions, plus 10 state champions during his time at Notre Dame.

The championships, though, were always secondary.

"We always wanted our boys to remember and behave like they were scholar athletes," Van Deusen said. "I've loved every team we've had, and I hope I have 'tough-loved' the third-stringers just as much as the starters.

"I remember one year we finished 19th in the state. Coach Worsham said we can't win it every year but we taught them all we wanted to teach them. I felt that way this year. We didn't quite fulfill the dream, but we taught them what we wanted to teach."