Biff Walizer Comes Home

New CM Wrestling Coach Settles In for First Season

BALD EAGLE TOWNSHIP – When the Central Mountain wrestling team opens its 2015-16 at the Top Hat Tournament in Williamsport this Friday, in addition to many new faces in the Wildcat lineup, there will be a new occupant in the head coaching chair.

Biff Walizer takes over as head coach after serving as first assistant a year ago to the since retired Doug Buckwalter. The big off-season story was Buckwalter’s retirement after 307 career wins, first as head coach at Lock Haven High School and the last 10 years at Central Mountain.

Now it is Walizer elevated to the head job and he brings impressive credentials: a 1994 graduate of Bald Eagle-Nittany High School where he compiled a 137-7 career mark which included two PIAA championships while wrestling for his father Biff Walizer. The younger Walizer went on to Penn State where he was a 4-time NCAA qualifier and an All-American his senior season, achieving 101 career wins. After graduating from Penn State, Walizer was the head coach for 12 years at Red Lion High School in District 3, compiling a 139-65 mark; he followed that with three years as an assistant at Millersville University.

Then it was time to come home, as Walizer put it: “My wife Marcie and I are both Bald Eagle-Nittany and Penn State grads. Even though we spent 15 years in York County, we still always referred to Clinton County as home. We had our third child in March of 2014. At that point we decided to begin looking at returning home. We both feel very fortunate to have been raised in Clinton County and it’s the place we have chosen to raise our family.”

The Walizer family returned to the area prior to the last school year and Walizer joined the Central Mountain coaching staff and is now in his second year as a learning support teacher at Bucktail High School (two Bucktail students, Josh Marr and Logan Long, are part of this year’s Wildcat team through a co-op program between the two Keystone Central schools).

Mrs. Walizer is the former Marcie Bauman. Like her husband she has an athletic background, competing in softball, basketball and soccer at Bald Eagle-Nittany. The Walizer children are son Griffin, a fifth grader; daughter Reese, a second grader; and daughter Raigan who just turned 21 months.

The new coach Walizer is courteous and mild-mannered at this point in his life but has always been competitive. Before the family came back to Clinton County, he spent some time participating in the challenging mixed martial arts. He said he had an interest in MMA early on but didn’t pursue it. “The next thing I knew I was in my 30’s and figured if I didn’t try it at that point, I’d be kicking myself down the road.” Walizer was an MMA participant for a few years. He said it gave him a chance to compete at places like the Taj Mahal and Tropicana in Atlantic City and earn some extra money.
He said the MMA training was challenging, not unlike wrestling. As for the bouts themselves, “Going the distance, 15 minutes, in an MMA cage is one of the most physically demanding things you can put your body through.”