Chuck Rasmussen

Chuck Rasmussen was born the oldest of six siblings to Richard and Shirley Rasmussen.

He graduated from River Valley High School, in Spring Green, in 1973. Chuck lettered in wrestling and baseball and wrestled for a charter member of the George Martin Wrestling Hall of Fame Coach Ray Stone.

After High School, Chuck attended the University of Wisconsin Platteville, majoring in Agriculture Education. After graduating in 1977, Chuck accepted an assistantship with the university as a teacher assistant while also working on an energy research project.

In the fall of 1978 Chuck started teaching Agriculture at Lancaster. One year later another Wrestling Hall of Fame member, Ken Manning, joined him in the two teacher Ag Education Department. After two years as Junior Varsity Coach Ken took the Head Wrestling position and Chuck joined him as his assistant. Between them they developed a very successful wrestling program along with a very successful Agriculture Education and FFA program. Chuck along with fellow Inductee Bob Johnson were 2021 Wisconsin FFA Hall of Fame Inductees.

Working together Ken and Chuck developed a program with excellent numbers. They introduced several changes including forfeiting JV dual meets and convinced other schools to allow their JV wrestlers to wrestle two 3-minute matches to allow more of our wrestlers to get matches. After being told it couldn’t be done, they also developed the time frame and financial plan to develop the “Clash” conference tournament which combined the SWC and SWAL conferences. They also developed an end of the regular season “open” tournament which included 6-man round robin brackets based on weight and ability level not by weight class.

After 12 years of working together Ken moved to Westby and Chuck took over as Lancaster Head Coach. Dennis Dixon, 2001 WWCA Assistant Coach of the year, joined him and they continued on as a consistently ranked top 10 team in Division 2.

Chuck was also Lancaster High School Head Baseball coach for 8 years and was named Conference Coach of the year 3 times. Chuck retired from High School coaching after 25 years and after a year away from coaching returned as Lancaster’s middle school coach. He was joined by former Lancaster state champion and two-time NCAA Division 3 All American Phil Wolf. Chuck and Phil just completed their 15th year of middle school coaching together.

During Chuck’s head coaching career his teams compiled a 188-48 dual meet record

Won 8 conference dual meet championships

Won the “Clash” tournament 3 times

Coached 29 state qualifiers including 18 place winners, 4 State Runner-ups and 2

State Champions

State Team qualifier in 2000

Bi-State Division 2 Champion in 2000 and runner up in 1993 and1998

As a JV and middle school coach he also helped develop another 70 state qualifiers

and 14 individual state champions

Chuck has also worked as a wrestling broadcaster for WGLR radio for the last 16 years.

During that time period he and Ken Manning teamed up together to broadcast six Division 3 state individual finals and team state matches for Fox Sports. Chuck has also worked with Ken with WWVP (Western Wisconsin Video Productions) broadcasting the Bi-State tournament and several American Legion Baseball Tournaments.

Chuck and his wife Mary have three sons and six grandchildren. His oldest son, Eric and wife Tessa have three children, Tayler, Olivia and London. Eric is the Emergency Management Director for Winnebago county and he is the lead youth wrestling coach for the Neenah school district. Middle son, Matt works for Scenic Rivers Energy Cooperative and is Lancaster High School Varsity Wrestling Assistant Coach. Matt and his wife Abby, have three children, Lane, Mara and Veda. Youngest son, Nate works for MGE and is also their local union president and business manager. Chuck would like to thank good friend Ken Manning for nominating him for this award and his wife Mary and family for their love and support in his involvement in the great sport of wrestling.