A Lion and his pride

Kerry McCoy has won two NCAA Championships. He's been to the Olympics. He's perhaps the top wrestling coach in the ACC.

Kerry McCoy also knows Jerry Sandusky.

A proud Penn State alumnus from the class of 1997, the Terrapins wrestling coach has a list of credentials and awards as long as his 6-foot-2 frame. But amid swirling controversies and allegations surrounding his alma mater, his knowing Sandusky and participating in numerous golf outings held by the former Nittany Lions defensive coordinator's foundation, the Second Mile, tend to stand out the most these days.

"It was shocking," McCoy said of hearing allegations that Sandusky had sexually assaulted and abused young boys who were involved in his charity. "It's a shock anytime you hear something like that, especially if it's someone you know or kind of know."

The two met during McCoy's time as an undergraduate in the late 1990s in Happy Valley, Pa. At the time, McCoy was starring on the mat for the Nittany Lions while Sandusky served on the football team's coaching staff under Joe Paterno.

Sandusky was also organizing fundraising events for the Second Mile, a nonprofit organization he founded in 1977 "committed to helping young people achieve their potential as individuals," according to the organization's website.

McCoy said he and Sandusky didn't have much interaction other than their time at charity events, but "if I ever saw him walking down the street," McCoy said, "he knew who I was, and I knew who he was."

Dealing with the allegations has been hard on McCoy, he said, because of the stigma that has become affixed to the Nittany Lions' community. It's a place he treasures so dearly that he married his wife, Abbie, in State College, Pa.

"I have a large love for Penn State, so when all these stories started coming out, it was really tough," he said. "Not many people know the full story, but every Penn Stater gets lumped into it. That's not the case at all; we weren't all involved. Perception is nine-tenths of reality."

Interim Penn State President Rod Erickson, who took over after the public ouster of ex-university President Graham Spanier and the legendary Paterno last week, said Saturday he was "proud" of the students at his university for their respectful, supportive manner during the first football game since the scandal broke. Last week, a riot left Happy Valley with overturned trucks and knocked-down lamp posts.

And even as new allegations seem to grow by the day, McCoy said he shares that same pride in the blue and white.

"I'm a Penn Stater," said McCoy, who served two terms as the president of the Penn State Student-Athlete Advisory Board. "I went there and I loved the school. The actions of a few should not tarnish the reputation of hundreds. The biggest thing here, and it's easy to get lost in it all, is the family of the kids and the kids affected directly by this. Being an alum doesn't even compare to being one of the kids in this situation. There's nothing easy about it."

With Penn State's scandal shedding new light on protocols for reporting incidents at universities nationwide, McCoy said he was unsure what this university requires. But a rigorous screening process that ensures officials hire only candidates whom they trust does exist, he said.

"It's just being aware of the type of people you have around," McCoy said. "We know from this that it's not a simple situation. You have to report something like this appropriately, and I believe that anything that would happen here would be dealt with that way."

It's become increasingly important for McCoy to distance himself from the allegations and the controversy engulfing his alma mater, he said, adding that he had no plans of watching Bob Costas' interview with Sandusky on Rock Center Monday night. After all, the Terps are still wrestling.

"I saw some mention of [the interview] on Twitter, but I don't think I plan on watching it," said McCoy, whose team will participate in the Central Jersey Open in Ewing, N.J., this weekend. "Right now, our focus is making our team better, so I don't really want to get caught in this or that or what's being done. I just want to focus on our program and on making us better. As for the stuff that is going on, the people that are responsible for handling that are going to handle that, and opinions are just that; they're opinions. I'm just focused on getting our team to be the best that it can be."

egan@umdbk.com