Beginning McDaniel College’s Women’s wrestling program in 2024
JAY VIELLE
Jay Vielle is a pen name I use, and in today’s Internet savvy world, it doesn’t take a hacker with face recognition software to figure out who I really am–nor is it a state secret nor a matter of national security. That top picture over there to the left, first of all, is more than 20 years old now. The pen name is simply a spelling out of my initials: JVL. “JVL” was my nick-name in college. I used to do a lot of cartoon work back then, and signed my name simply as “JVL”–and it stuck. For at least four or five years at Washington & Lee University, people on campus might be puzzled if you asked them if they knew John Lowe. JVL, on the other hand, they knew.
WHY THE PEN NAME? When finally coming to the point of publishing, I had to decide whether to use my real name or a pen name, and I was unsure enough that I threw the idea around to a number of friends and colleagues. As a lifelong teacher and coach in as many as four different high schools and four different colleges, I’ve gotten to know a lot of people. My coaching career also took me to well over a dozen summer camps where I have either worked as a featured clinician, assisted as a counselor, or brought my team for development. That guy– Coach Lowe on the mat, or Señor Lowe in the classroom–had an entire other life’s worth of invested memories. I didn’t want that life–the one that paid the bills and made me who I am in the community–to intrude upon the made-up-world created by Jay Vielle. Any success or failure that comes from writing fiction will be Jay Vielle’s doing. The other stuff–that belonged to John Lowe. So while it’s not a trade secret that we are the same person, it’s also true that one set of interests is separate from the other–hence the decision to write under the pseudonym as Jay Vielle.
TEACHING & LEARNING – If you decide to look up John Lowe, however, you’ll find much of the following: I am a 1987 graduate of Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, who took a post-grad year there in an exchange program at Mary Baldwin University just up the interstate in Staunton, Virginia to get my teacher’s certification. After that, I got my Master’s Degree at Salisbury University, where I helped to pay for my tuition by serving as Assistant Wrestling Coach and an instructor of Composition and Literature with the English Department’s fellowship program. I also published a few things in Salisbury’s Literary Magazine, The Scarab. I have been an Adjunct English Professor at both Frederick and Carroll Community Colleges, and have had teaching stints in both English and Spanish at Easton, Oakland Mills, and Winters Mills High Schools in Maryland.
COACHING WRESTLING – In addition to coaching at Salisbury, I also had early (late 1980’s-early 1990’s) at St. Michaels High School (my alma mater) and Oakland Mills High School in Columbia. My first really big break, though came as head coach coach at McDaniel College (formerly known as Western Maryland–after the railroad) for nine seasons, 1994-2003. Some big “firsts” occurred there, including Centennial Conference titles, All-Americans, and Top-20 NCAA finishes. During that period I also coached the Maryland High School National Teams in freestyle and Greco-Roman, and helped train the 1993 Deaf World Team in international wrestling styles as well, and worked more years at the summer camps at the Naval Academy and the McDonogh School than I care to admit. I finished my last 18 years of coaching at Winters Mill High School in Westminster, MD. I “retired” from the boys’ head coaching position in 2019, and started and coached the girls’ program from 2019-2024. The Winters Mill experience was been awesome from top to bottom. I got to coach both of my sons, Hunter & Alex, as well as teach them in the classroom. and our success there– 5 state titles, a dozen county titles (including a couple recent ones from the girls team) was due to having great people around me in a great atmosphere for many years.
CURRENTLY--As of September 2024, I am the women’s wrestling coach at McDaniel College, where (thanks to men’s coach Mason Goretsas) I have an awesome job that I love to go to every day, and we are creating a really special program on “the Hill.”
SIDE HUSTLES – I was an NCAA wrestling official for 3 seasons for the ACC and the EIWA as well as Division III. I do some announcing as well… 5 seasons of Winters Mill Football, the 2009 EIWA Championshps, as well as the Navy-Ohio State match in 2019 and the Maryland-Rider match in 2020. I have published articles and/or Op Ed pieces in Wrestling USA, W.I.N. Magazine, The NCAA News, The Maryland Wrestler, and the Carroll County Times. I am very honored and humbled to have been selected to be in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame and the McDaniel College Green Terror Hall of Fame–both as a result of my coaching career.
Writing with Jay Vielle 