Mighty Matt: Wolf Is On a Roll With Avalon Lifeguards, Middle Township Wrestlers
Matt with David Giulian after David won high school state quarterfinals in Atlantic City.
In every great career, hindsight reveals a breakout.
It’s the time period later viewed as the omen, the blazing trumpet, and the fireworks that signaled something special.
Matt Wolf is in that breakout mold now.
Over the last 18 months, there is much to savor for the Avalon native, who just launched his 18th season as the Middle Township High School wrestling coach.
Wolf has notched a string of recent championships across two sports that vault his perceived deeds from good to very good, exceptional and, finally, elite.
This dream run includes piloting three South Jersey Lifeguard championship teams among the men and women for the Avalon Beach Patrol.
Other signature moments include being named The Press of Atlantic City and the Courier-Post’s high school wrestling coach of the year for 2024-25, voted on by journalists. Throw in the same accolade from District 29, decided by coaches. Wolf not only guided Middle Township to a 20-4 record this past season, but its first-ever South Jersey Group II championship.
What a run.
The march denotes his surge from local boy made good to a place among southern New Jersey’s premier coaches.
For Wolf, who turns 42 in December, this was a long time coming. Put in the work every day and one day … boom!
“This has been years in the making,” Wolf indicates. “There has been so much involved for so long and when you finally hit the pinnacle of it after 18 or so years, you look like an overnight success.
“The joy of this right now for me is seeing the look on a kid’s face when he or she has trusted something that’s been taught and they realize, ‘Hey, that worked.’ We are here to be part of their education in life. Wins and losses are part of that, but what we are doing through sports is teaching.”
Wolf was drawn to leadership early in life, before circumstance propelled it.
“This started with my dad, the lifeguard races and things like that,” says Matt, one of three sons of Murray Wolf, the Avalon legend who authored roughly seven decades on the patrol and captured nine South Jerseys championships as its captain.
“When I was as young as I can remember, I used to buy the little boats at Hoy’s 5 & 10, take the top off of them so that it looked like a lifeboat, and draw Avalon on the side,” Matt laughs. “I would figure that my brothers [Erich and Tyler] were the lieutenants and I was the captain.
“We sat next to the lifeguards on the Avalon beach with a rubber raft. I guess it was preordained. Years later, when my dad was a coach, I remember looking at different situations and thinking, ‘Man, I think I would do it this way.’”
The coaching world found Matt sooner than he expected. He’d competed in football, wrestling, and baseball at Middle Township, adding football and wrestling at The Peddie School in Hightstown. But a neck injury diagnosed while at Ursinus College abruptly changed his focus.
Matt became a student wrestling coach and later moved back to the area when a job opened for a physical education teacher, wrestling and football coach at Middle Township.
Wolf carved his own path while incorporating nuggets from others. His dad taught Matt to be laser-focused on one thing – lifesaving – amid the blizzard of details engulfing a 125-member patrol. His mom Vicki taught Matt to be himself. The younger generation, like beach patrol swimmer and South Jerseys champion Dolan Grisbaum, has taught him about technological matters like artificial intelligence.
Wolf added those lessons to a lifetime of principles.
“There are no get-rich quick schemes in life and that has been true in every stage of mine,” he notes. “You must work hard, all the time, and you have to stay with it.
“You also can’t be great without the greatness of others. I mean, how terrific are the kids we get to work with? They are eager, they want to learn, they want to win.”
Wolf planted the seed for this scenario, helping to cultivate the feeder program that reversed a once 5-20 wrestling program. That earned him many supporters, including Dr. Sharon Rementer, who was Middle Township High School’s new athletic director in 2017 when their paths first crossed.
“Matt was an absolute gem to work with, which was very important to me at that time,” recalls Rementer, now the school’s principal. “Matt was the football, wrestling, and track coach. He was very helpful to me in what was then my new role.
“He is terrific for the kids, he truly cares about them,” she adds. “Matt has a passion for setting them up for success. The kids know exactly what is expected of them. He has nonnegotiable rules with them and they are accountable. He has also been a mentor, happy to help anyone who needs a Matt Wolf in their life.”
Rementer hailed Wolf’s efforts to connect the high school and middle school wrestling groups. She says there are teams and there are programs. Wolf runs a program that becomes all-encompassing throughout the community. He finds young athletes and nurtures their progress right through high school and beyond.
As a trailblazer herself, having served as Middle Township’s first-ever female AD and principal, Rementer hails Wolf’s efforts to guide female wrestlers.
Although Middle Township does not have a formal program, Wolf has worked with female wrestlers, placing them into competition with male wrestlers on his team. That delivered some significant post-high school breakthroughs for them. Courtney Bowyer is the latest example. The Middle Township graduate is in the wrestling program at Arcadia University outside of Philadelphia.
In retrospect, it appears that Wolf was always destined to coach.
He followed the path of his dad – who once guided the Pleasantville High School wrestling team to a district title – but not by design. The elder Wolf did not push his son into this area. Matt’s coaching passion simply evolved.
“He coaches the kids really well,” Murray asserts. “I think what really helps Matt is that he gets out in front of the program and starts talking with them well before they compete for him.
“On top of that, he’s brought a lot of assistants in [many are volunteers] and they are all good. The kids get to see a lot of people. When I coached, it was one assistant and myself.”
The elder Wolf said there was never a lightbulb moment when he realized Matt would be a coach. But he figured his son would utilize initiative and a good foundation via the beach patrol throughout his life. Like his brothers, Matt joined at 14. That age limit was later pushed to 16.
“Last year was a great season for Matt,” says Murray Wolf, who, along with Vicki, attends many of his Middle Township High School events. They are used to seeing those teams win. Middle Township has gone 135-64 since 2016-17 and produced 10 district champions, one region titleholder, six state qualifiers and one state semifinalist.
“There was excitement all the way,” Murray says. “I could not be more happy or proud of him.”
Matt has allowed his athletes to view him from different vantage points. Some saw him as a performer, like when he helped Avalon garner a 2015 South Jerseys team title with a third-place doubles-row finish alongside Jake Enright, whom he’d coached in high school.
Matt also seized 10 Kerr Surf Dash Relay championships and won the MS 6-Mile Bay Race, the Kerrs, Beschen Callahan, and Cape May County races as a doubles rower.
Another wrestling-beach patrol connection involves David Giulian, who shares a treasured journey with him.
Giulian has lifelong memories with Wolf. He saw the entire Wolf family every week at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Stone Harbor. Later the connection involved working out with his brother Karl in front of Wolf as a middle-school athlete. That morphed into four years of Wolf coaching Giulian in four endeavors: football, wrestling, track and field, and lifeguarding.
“One major reason for Matt’s success is that he doesn’t care about his stats or his record, he cares about us,” says Giulian, now a stellar linebacker at The College of New Jersey, where he has led the team in tackles for two seasons. Giulian had helped lead TCNJ to a 6-1 start, its finest in years, as of this writing. He also wrestles for the school.
“Matt cares about instilling what it takes for you to be a good person,” Giulian indicates. “I think that meant always checking in with you, knowing what’s going on in your life and then being able to flip the switch from being serious until 5pm and then not as serious after that.”
Giulian smiles, recalling one of Matt’s nonnegotiables in high school. The wrestlers needed to have applied for a college before they could represent Middle Township High School on the mats.
By the time he graduated in 2022, Giulian was The Press of Atlantic City’s male athlete of the year. Along the way, he had a sixth-place finish in the state championships at 190 pounds, earning a spot on the podium for the award ceremonies. He slowly attained further success in the summer, working his way up from newbie to being a cog in Avalon’s two South Jersey lifeguard championships. Giulian and Gary Nagle secured important fourth- and second-place finishes in the doubles row in Avalon’s last two championships.
“What you learn from Matt as a boss is that he never asks you to do something he could not or would not do,” Giulian says. “It sends a message to the whole patrol about our commitment to the people of Avalon when the chief is the first one there every morning. You see him work out and you understand why he’s pushing us to take care of our bodies so that we can respond when the people need us most.”
Giulian savors a bonus beyond the coach-athlete relationship. It’s something they planned together.
“We’re at the state finals in Atlantic City, up in the stands at Boardwalk Hall, and I had just won the match to set me up against a kid who had beaten me in the district and regional finals,” Giulian says of his last high-school wrestling days. “He had pinned me the week before.
“Coach Matt said, ‘Take a look down. Here we are, relaxing with our feet up, and there he is, pacing around, thinking about you. I know you are going to beat him today. Just think about how you got here and stick to that.’ And it hit me, even before I made that connection myself, that this guy believes in me and I am here to win.
“Sure enough, I was able to get a takedown in overtime and win the match. I will never forget Coach Matt believing in me so strongly, or that I won and then sought him afterward to hug him. That’s a memory that may live forever for me.”
Wolf smiles about the story, recalling how they composed the game plan together. He’d studied video with Giulian and they changed strategy from being an aggressive wrestler to one letting his opponent make the mistake. In overtime, Giulian sensed an opportunity and glanced over to his coach. They exchanged knowing grins, as in “go now.” A moment later, Giulian seized the next-point-wins match before about 10,000 screaming spectators.
Wolf celebrates high moments like this, but he maintains his same coaching approach. Details. Endless details. He handles them days, weeks, and even months ahead of time.
Wolf will post notes on his phone about a point to bring up with an athlete somewhere down the line. He pours emotions into the labor of love that is high-school coaching. Reasonable estimates project the hourly wage of a devoted high-school coach to roughly $5 an hour.
For those who connected with Matt Wolf over the past couple of decades, it’s hard to imagine a bigger bang for the buck. For those who have not, watch him grace an expanding spotlight.
