Leading with Love: USA Wrestling Coach’s Corner feature on Katlyn Monroe (Pizzo)

Photo: Monroe (center), coaches alongside her husband, Jordan, who serves as SOU’s women’s assistant coach, while their daughter, Aspen, far left, watches on.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in WIN’s Volume 32 Issue 1, which printed Oct. 31, 2025. Monroe’s Southern Oregon squad just placed sixth at thw 2026 NWCA Multi-Division National Duals in the women’s NAIA division despite entering the tournament unseeded. 

By Tristan Warner

If Katlyn Monroe (Pizzo) wasn’t born to be a wrestler, her dad and brothers made sure she became one. If she wasn’t born to be a wrestling coach, her college coach and mentor, Lee Miracle, made sure she became one.

Growing up in Clawson, Mich., Monroe’s brothers wrestled, so her dad thought she should, too. Her early escapades in the sport began as a secret, though.

“I did it because it was the family thing,” Monroe explained. “My dad and brothers wrestled. I was adamant about not wrestling for my school at first because it was my secret and I was embarrassed,” she continued. “I didn’t want my friends to know.”

“My freshman season in high school, my two older brothers were on the team with me. I only had one year of high school without a brother on the team. They looked out for me.”

Monroe twice qualified for the boys’ state tournament and placed her senior year, one of just three girls to ever accomplish the feat.

She went on to become a two-sport athlete at Campbellsville (Ky.), participating in cross-country as well as wrestling under one of the nation’s top coaches in Lee Miracle.

As a wrestler, Monroe was a four-time All-American, placing 2nd in the WCWA in 2020 and 3rd and 5th in the NAIA in 2021 and 2022, respectively. She was also awarded First-Team AA honors by the NAIA in 2020 after the Nationals were cancelled. Meanwhile, she was a contributing member to Campbellsville’s back-to-back NAIA team titles.

And as much as she learned from Miracle and company during her time in Kentucky, it was his off-the-mat mentorship that jump-started and fast-tracked her trajectory in her own coaching career.

“Almost through natural leadership training, Coach Lee (Miracle) would call me out if it wasn’t good enough. As a captain then later as a graduate assistant, he was pulling me into tough conversations.

“He pushed me one step at a time. He made me uncomfortable, but it made me grow. He had me help run practice and taught me how to be a manager as a coach. I learned how to have hotels and timelines solidified and how to keep track of everyone somehow.”

“We got to the top and stayed there because (Miracle) focused on the culture and who we were as people. You can fall from the top very quickly.”

After earning her master’s degree in business, Monroe stepped into her first head coaching role immediately at Alma, a startup program, where she served for three years. There, she was grateful for the mentorship from Alma assistant athletic director and wrestling coach Todd Hibbs, a Hall of Famer in his own right.

“He had hard conversations about how you present yourself. Very easily, I could have made myself look poorly as a young female, so I knew I had to act accordingly, even on social media. He taught me professionalism.

“Alma was a great place to start. It is important for other aspiring coaches to not just take any position that is available. It has to be the right position. You need people in your corner who can help you succeed.”

Alma’s program improved dramatically in a short time frame. But for Monroe, whose husband Jordan served as her assistant, building the culture was more imperative than the wins.

In late May, Monroe was announced as the new head coach at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Ore. She has already hit the ground running, raising the bar and implementing practices geared toward excellence.

“I wanted to be able to provide opportunities and provide scholarships, which DIII could not do and there wasn’t as much as I could do to help.

“We have three pillars: great human, great student and great wrestler,” she explained.

The first pillar, being a great human, is where Monroe really rolls up her sleeves. She believes in personal accountability but drives the point home by harnessing the power of team accountability, too.

“Our punishment is to give back to the team. I stole this from our cheer coach at Alma … anytime they are supposed to be punished, they have to write a full apology letter to every member of the team and coaches and hand it to them the very next day.

“It is not just athletic punishment like sprints. I want them to sit and think about how what they did affects their teammates and our program.”

Monroe expects the same moral alignment from her coaches as she does her student-athletes, which is how her husband uniquely ended up as her assistant coach.

“I am really particular about who I let my girls around. It is a woman’s role to mother the world not just their own children. My mom loved anyone who walked through her door. I love my girls. I am super picky about who I let them around.

“I knew my husband believed in those values and was ready to go to war for them too. He was my training partner my last year in college. Everything he knew about freestyle wrestling he knew because of women’s wrestling.”

Monroe, a new mom whose daughter, Aspen, can frequently be seen in her arms while coaching dual meets or on the laps of her student-athletes, truly views the members of her program as members of her family.

“You got to love the girls. One thing we do, which I love, is we invite them into our lives. We invite them into our family. If they can’t go home for Easter or Thanksgiving, they come to our house. If you can’t go home to your family, you come to our family.

“This is a hard sport to get through if you don’t feel like you have people who love you. For athletes I am recruiting, I don’t hard sell. They have to feel love and connection. If it’s not the right fit, that is okay.”

Monroe extends that advice to all young student-athletes and women in general, hoping to empower them to make decisions that will set them up for success.

“Love yourself enough and respect yourself enough to know what you deserve and what you don’t deserve. I am working with young women. It is ok to say, ‘no this isn’t good enough for me.’ It might be hard, but hard things are typically things that are worth it.”