Internationally Recognized

In a fitting tribute from the American wrestling community, the national hierarchy of U.S. amateur wrestling came to northern New Jersey for a major Olympic fundraising dinner early in 2006 and honored Blair Academy’s longtime head coach Jeff Buxton with USA Wrestling’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The speakers included wrestling legend Dan Gable, U.S. Olympic Coach Steve Fraser and recently retired Olympic Gold Medalist Rulon Gardner, who was honored along with Coach Buxton.

One of the highlights of the evening for the four hundred in attendance was a special video presentation depicting former Buxton Blair wrestlers in action at the most-recent NCAA’s, those of 2005. As the video showed, Coach Buxton’s wrestlers won 30 matches at those NCAAs and took five All American places that included an amazing two firsts, one second and a third.

Jeff Buxton was a coach and math teacher at Blair Academy starting in 1982. At first, Jeff coached both lacrosse and wrestling at Blair, but eventually, he focused on wrestling, becoming co-head wrestling coach in 1984 and head wrestling coach in 1991.

Coach Buxton wrestled for the University of Rhode Island and was the Outstanding Wrestler at the 1980 Northeastern Regional Trials for the United States Olympic Team. He is a member of the Rhode Island Hall of Fame and in 2009 was selected as the first-ever National Wrestling Coaches Association (NWCA) “National Prep Coach of the Year,” an award he won twice more, including in 2012.

In addition to their son Tony, Carol and Jeff Buxton have a daughter, Siena, Blair Class of 2011 and High Point (NC) College Class of 2015.