Charles “Chuck” Farina attended Proviso Township High School from 1941 to 1945 where he wrestled at 125 pounds, taking the state title his senior year under Hall of Fame coach Louis Slimmer, whose teams at Proviso won seven state titles in eight years.

After graduating from Proviso, Chuck enlisted in the Marines at 17 years old in hopes of seeing combat, but World War II ended before he ever saw action.

After his tour of duty, Farina enrolled at Purdue on the GI bill in 1947, and joined the wrestling team under the tutelage of legendary Purdue coach Claude Reeck.

In 1950, Farina won the Big Ten individual title at 136 pounds for the Boilermakers' Big Ten championship team. He went on to earn All-America honors with a fourth-place finish at the NCAA Championships. The following season, Farina repeated as a Big Ten champion, winning the crown in the 137-pound class.

Farina went on to earn his master’s degree in physical education from Purdue. After graduating from Purdue in 1951, Farina spent two years as a judo instructor at Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Then in 1954, at 26 years old, he joined the staff at East Leyden High School in Franklin Park, Illinois.

In his 36 years at Leyden and three years at Gordon Tech, Farina won a then-national record 644 dual meets, with 99 losses and seven ties. His teams at East Leyden went unbeaten in dual meets for an Illinois record nine seasons. And, from 1970-79 Farina’s teams won 162 of 164 dual meets, including 88 in a row. From 1937-1983 there was no separate state final for dual team competition.

Farina coached two team and 17 individual state champions. His 1978 Class AA title-winning squad not only posted a dual meet record of 20-0, but also scored an unprecedented 129.5 points in the state tournament. The 129.5 points still stands as the highest point total in the 46-year history of the old format. Runner up Joliet West finished second that year with 62.5 points.

Coach Farina retired as the all-time winningest high school wrestling coach in the country, and no coach in Illinois history has won more dual meets at a single school.

Retirement could not keep Farina away from the mat, however, as he later served as a volunteer coach at Elmhurst College in Illinois) and Chaparral High School in Temecula, California.

Bob Kruse, who wrestled at Leyden before wrestling and playing football at Wayne State College in Kansas and playing professional football for the Oakland Raiders, said “I’ve had three great coaches in my life: Chuck Farina, Paul Brown, and John Madden. And that’s the order they belong. I credit Coach Farina more than anyone for what I was able to accomplish.”

As a wrestling coach, Farina was highly decorated, including being named the 1975 National Wrestling Coach of the Year by the National High School Athletic Coaches Association. He was the 1974 Illinois Wrestling Coach of the Year (Illinois Coaches Association) and was inducted into the Illinois Wrestling Hall of Fame the same year. He was honored as the Illinois Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association Man of the Year in 1990. Farina was inducted into the National High School Sports Hall of Fame by the National Federation of State High School Associations in 1987, and was honored with the Lifetime Service to Wrestling award by the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1997.

As a tribute to the man, more than 40 of his wrestlers went on to become high school coaches, and East Leyden High School dedicated the Charles J. Farina Fieldhouse in 1986.

His son James won two Illinois wrestling titles while under the guidance of his father at Leyden High School while his son Michael won one title at York High School and went on to place eighth in Greco-Roman competition at the 1976 Olympic Games.

If there was a monument in Illinois for high school wrestling coaches, Coach Chuck Farina would be at the top.

“He’s one of those names that everybody knows,” said Mike Bukovsky, who led Montini Catholic High School to a 397-35 record. “He was a giant in the sport.”