Coach Walter Peterson is quick to acknowledge his good fortune in having worked with some of the best and brightest wrestling coaches in New York. He cites, among other outstanding influences, four Hall of Fame inductees: Bill Layton, Gene Mills, Don Murray and Art Connorton. Coach Peterson naturally praises these great coaches for increasing his knowledge of the sport, but he especially emphasizes their contributions to developing and increasing his teaching skills. Great coaches are, by definition, great teachers. Walt Peterson is a retired educator with a distinguished thirty-one year teaching career in American History, World History, Sociology, Government, Economics, Psychology and other subjects at Avoca Central School. During those thirty-one years at Avoca, while conducting 5 or 6 daily classes and supervising cafeterias and monitoring study halls, Walt Peterson built an estimable record as a conch . His wrestling reams compiled an overall record of 241-117-2. They won 8 Steuben County Titles and 7 Steuben County League titles, 13 invitational tournament championships, 2 Section V Class championships, 3 Campbell-Savona Sportsmanship Awards, and produced 2 undefeated seasons. Outstanding individual wrestlers under his tutelage won 81 invitational tournament championships and 33 Sectional championships. All this was accomplished by teams from one of the smallest high schools in the state. His wrestlers have done him proud after their high school years as well, many of them becoming coaches, Athletic Directors and officials and thereby continuing to add to his legacy. At least three of Walt's assistant coaches have become head coaches of high school programs, and the program at West Point has been run by one of Walt's proteges. Thus, the lessons of Bill Layton, Art Connorton and others, as absorbed and adapted by Walt Peterson, live on in wrestling rooms throughout New York and beyond. Walt Peterson also shouldered more than his share of those administrative duties that too often go unheralded. He served as Steuben County League Chairman for 22 years and as the wrestling coordinator of the league for 21 years, overseeing schedules and tournaments, enforcing state standards, maintaining records and conducting hearings on disputes. He also put in 21 years as Chairman for Section V Class C and D, coordinating Sectional and State qualifying tournaments, overseeing the implementation of new rules and formats, recording and reporting tournament results, and enforcing state standards. In the early 1970s, while coaching his Avoca team to a series of Steuben County League and Tournament championships, Walt found time to introduce and help develop a wrestling program at Jasper Central School. In 1976, he and Tom Kressly, the Hammondsport coach, developed the Canoe Landing Invitational Tournament and, in 1980, together with Watkins Glen Coach Jeff Wheeler, Walt developed the Annual Watkins Glen Invitational Tournament. In 1991, Walt developed the Eight Mile Tree Round Robin Tournament (now the Walt Peterson Tournament hosted annually by Haverling High School in Bath) which introduced to western New York the format allowing every wrestler in a full weight class to compete in eight matches. The Walt Peterson Tournament offers a competitive start to the season for individual wrestlers, no team score is kept, and it is one of the more competitive events available to wrestlers from Sections 4, 5, and 6. In the 10 years since his retirement from teaching, Walt has continued his coaching activities. From 1999 to 2004, he served as Assistant Coach to Gene Mills at Phoenix Central School, helping to develop the modified program there and offering clinics at Coach Mills' Pin2Win summer camp program. Since 2002, Walt has contributed to Coach Don Murray's stellar program at SUNY Brockport as an assistant and "B" Team coach. There, in Coach Murray's estimation, Walt Peterson has become an "integral component of the Golden Eagle's Wrestling Program... [whose] mastery of skill development, dependability and sincere enthusiasm has contributed to four conference titles, seven tournament championships, and the success of 15 NCAA Division III All-Americans and one Division III national champ in the short time he has been here." Additionally, Walt works as a clinician at the Oklahoma Gold Camp held each summer at Brockport by Coach Jack Spates of the University of Oklahoma. During the school year, Walt participates in pro bono clinics for high school programs in Avoca, Haverling (Bath), Canisteo, Trumansburg, Auburn, Oswego and Phoenix Central Schools. He is an evaluator for Section V with the recently introduced weight certification procedure, and he is an Instructor for New York State's Coaching Certification Program and has authored a handbook for beginning coaches now being used by more than 150 Steuben-Allegheny coaches as part of their coaching certification process. You might think that Walt has little opportunity to develop interests outside of wrestling, but you would be quite wrong. Walt is a licensed pilot. He is an accomplished mariner, sail and power, a certified Boat Safety Instructor, and the former owner-operator of a charter fishing business. He has made at least 7 trips to the Canadian Arctic to pursue large trout, salmon and char. He has two novels nearing completion which draw on themes based upon his interest in historical events. Walt and his wife, Judith, annually attend the NCAA Division I Wrestling Tournament and the Women's NCAA Basketball Final Four games. They also make occasional trips to Boston to cheer for the Celtics and thus deserve both compassion and admiration for their loyalty. Walt is the proud father of Eric, Brian and Kristen and the proud grandfather of Victor. From 1998 to 2004, Walt and Judith Peterson supplied the Section V team with their singlets for the State Tournament with a view toward assuring team members a memento of the experience. During a four year period (1999-2001) they also made significant monetary contributions to defray the costs of the medals awarded at the State Tournament. The New York Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame is pleased to recognize the accomplishments of Walter E. Peterson by inducting him into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.