Silva steps away from Simsbury after 11 seasons

T.J. Silva won’t be coaching Simsbury this winter. He resigned in the off season as head coach after 11 seasons.

A familiar face won’t be on the side of the wrestling mat this winter in Simsbury.

Wrestling coach T.J. Silva stepped down after 10 seasons with the Trojans. His wife gave birth to twins at the end of October and his young family now has three youngsters under the age of three.

“I made the hard choice to step away,” said Silva, who is a special education teacher in the Simsbury school system. “It was a hard decision but it was time. I wasn’t looking to leave.”

At Simsbury, Silva had big goals and wasn’t afraid to share them. He wanted his Trojans to be among the top teams in Connecticut and New England.

In 10 seasons – one season was lost due to the COVID-10 pandemic, Simsbury won five CCC West championships and two CCC Tournament titles in 2020 and 2022. His teams came achingly close to winning a state championship.

Three times, Simsbury finished second behind in Class L in 2019, 2020 and 2022.

In 2019, Simsbury finished a half point behind Bristol Eastern. In 2020, they finished 2½ points behind Xavier. He posted a dual meet record of 102-39 with Simsbury.

“It was a time that I got to grow as a coach and grow my passion for the sport,” he said. “It was a great 11 years. We did a lot of really special things. We helped make wrestling mean something in Simsbury.

“It was a special program,” he said. “When we came in there was 14 to 15 guys in the program and within four or five years, we had built it up to where we had 55 or 60 wrestlers on the team.”

Silva, who was 26 when he took over in Simsbury, was thrilled to be able to get Hall of Fame coach Frank Chaves to return to the program. Chaves coached Simsbury for 29 years from 1978 through 2006 before becoming an official.

“He helped guide me to become a better coach, a better man, a better teacher,” Silva said.

While Silva isn’t a head coach today, he isn’t done with wrestling. He is helping out as an assistant coach at Greens Farms Academy (GFA) in Westport, home of the Dragons, the three-time defending New England prep school champions.

At Simsbury, he coached two-time State Open, two-time New England and two-time National High School Coaches Association (NSCHA) national champion Max Konopka.

Konopka, who recently committed to wrestle at Virginia Tech in the fall of 2027, recently transferred to GFA.

Silva was in Ohio over the weekend supporting Konopka, who won the Walsh Jesuit Ironman tournament at 215 pounds.

“I see myself coming back to the sport,” Silva said. “I just don’t know in what capacity.”

The new coach in Simsbury is William Hearn, the former head coach at Smith Vocational in Northampton, Mass., for 10 years. He competed at West Springfield High during his scholastic days.