BUTCH BITETTO

Butch has over 30 years of coaching experience, mostly dealing with youth-level wrestling.  In 1985, Butch started the Hackensack Youth Wrestling Team and was one of the pioneers of the Twin County League.  He coached the Jr. Comets for 25 years before becoming an assistant wrestling coach at Don Bosco Prep under his son Chris. Butch coached over 20 individual state championships and over 75 state place-finishers at Hackensack Youth alone. 

 

 He was also a coach with Team NJ, where he took the team on the Indiana Schoolboy trip for the first time and took a team to the World Team Trials.  In 2010, he joined the Don Bosco Prep coaching staff and started to build the program into a national powerhouse. Butch was in the corner coaching Razohnn Gross, Don Bosco's first state champion, He helped mentor the young coaching staff and wrestlers to accomplish six state champions and over 30 state place finishers. 

 

In 1992, Butch converted his two-car garage into a wrestling room for his sons and other Hackensack children so they could have a place to train.  Nicknamed the "Magic Room" it was home to some of the most notable names in NJ wrestling.  It was also where Bitetto Trained Wrestling started.  Wrestlers from Hackensack requested workouts with Butch at the garage. The idea of youth training in the garage expanded beyond Butch. He brought in Pete Gonzalez to train his sons and other wrestlers in the area. 

 

This led to Rich Bitetto starting Bitetto Trained School of Wrestling in 2003.  His clientele expanded and they had to move the location to a gym in Teterboro and then to East Rutherford.