PHOENIX — It’s no secret that Robert Shegog is passionate about wrestling
He’s even more passionate about the students he coached at North High School in Phoenix for nearly two decades, starting in the late 80s.
“I treated them like they were my kids,” he said.
Nick Kehagias was one of his "kids", who went to North High and wrestled under Coach Shegog in 1996.
“I wouldn’t be where I am today without his influence,” Nick Kehagias said.
It’s his animated coaching style that Kehagias remembers well.
“When he’s in the stands, he’ll just kind of stand up and try to get in there, you know, because it’s in his blood. He just can’t help but like visualize himself out there too,” Kehagais said.
While coaching wrestling seemed like Shegog’s whole life, he had a second life that he deliberately kept secret.
“I had years and years of having two different lives,” Shegog said.
“It was just amazing how he was able to influence so many people at the risk of constantly losing his job,” Kehagais said.
He was at risk because of a culture that wouldn’t accept Shegog and his whole life.
“I’d have my gay friends over here, and my straight friends over here. And I never allowed anyone from either group to mingle or talk,” Shegog said.
Shegog said he’d send out Christmas cards with a letter he’d pen during the holidays. He would send out two different letters to the two different groups of people in his life.
“There’s a paranoia or fear,” Shegog said.
Even when Shegog’s life and the lives of those he loved were on the line.
“Every year, I tried to throw something new and that would make that a unique year, because I didn’t think I would be back the next year,” Shegog said of his time coaching the student-athletes at North High. “I thought I would be dead.”
It was in 1986 that Shegog said he was diagnosed with HIV.
The diagnosis followed him through his coaching career and over the years, he’d end up getting sick.
In the mid-1990s, Shegog said he was sick for the entire summer.
“I went to bed in May. And I did not get out until August,” Shegog said.
Over that time, Shegog said his partner at the time took care of him and questioned whether he would return to coaching next season.
“I said, ‘No, I’m going back’,” Shegog recalled.
Back at school at the end of August, Shegog remembers the questions he received.
“People saw how thin I was so, ‘Oh, I just been running all summer.’ I lied. But if it was to protect my program I will lie. I did lie to protect my program,” Shegog said.
When Shegog wasn’t at practice, he cared for partners who eventually passed away.
Back in the early 2000s, Shegog would go straight from wrestling practice to the bedside of his partner, who was dying at a local hospital, then in the morning go back to teach.
“We had no idea what he was going through,” Kehagais said.
Shegog came out to Kehagais after Kehagais had graduated college.
Now, for 10 years, Kehagais said he’s been trying to get his coach’s story written down and shared.
So when COVID hit, Kehagais said he tried once more.
“I said, ‘You know what, how’s this: I’ll write it for you, coach, because I think it’s just such an inspiring story that the world needs to hear.’,” Kehagais said.
Now, at 70 years old, “Wrestling with the Truth”, a memoir, is where Shegog’s truth lives.
“Hopefully, people will read this book, and also have a different perspective on how they might have viewed things, and can consider trying to do better in the future,” Kehagais said.
“For that one other one out there, who's in the closet, who is hiding their truth that maybe, this will help move them closer to telling their truth,” Shegog said.
The book is available now, and Shegog and Kehagais will be together at Burton Barr Central Library in Phoenix on Saturday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. reading passages from the book and answering questions.
More information about the book can be found here.
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