Sibling Rivalry
By: Camila Pupo Flores, Watkins Mill High School.
For most wrestling matches in Montgomery County, the rivalry ends when the final whistle blows. But for the Tao brothers, it’s a little different. When your opponent is also your sibling, the competition doesn’t stay in the gym—it follows you home.
Chris, Tim, and AJ Tao all graduated from Wheaton High School, all wrestled, and all went on to become varsity head coaches in MCPS. Over the years, they’ve coached together, coached against each other, and—according to at least one of them—kept careful track of who’s winning.
Every sibling rivalry has a starting point, and for the Taos, it was Chris Tao, Wheaton High School class of 1996. He was the first brother to wrestle, competing under legendary Maryland Hall of Fame coach Dave Moquin. Although recruited as a freshman, Chris didn’t wrestle until his sophomore year because his father insisted his grades come first.
Once Chris joined the team, the tone was set.
“Younger brother saw it and thought it was cool,” AJ Tao admitted. “So we followed.”
AJ, who graduated in 2003, didn’t officially wrestle his freshman year- he weighed just 85 pounds- but he practiced with the team and wrestled varsity for the rest of high school.
Tim Tao, class of 2000, had a slightly different start. He joined wrestling through a close friend in middle school and wrestled three years in high school, practicing with the team as a freshman while competing with the Wheaton Generals due to weight restrictions.
There’s also a fourth brother, Matthew Tao, class of (1999), who wrestled and later helped coach as a volunteer, occasionally still showing up as a guest clinician. But the real rivalry lives with the three brothers who ended up coaching-and competing against each other.
What started as sibling influence turned into full careers.
Chris began thinking about coaching in 2001, during his first-year teaching in MCPS. By 2003, he officially started coaching at Blake High school, later moving through Churchill, Quince Orchard, and eventually landing at Poolesville High School, where he is now a co-head wrestling coach. Even when he stepped away briefly to coach his son’s intramural team, wrestling kept pulling him back.
AJ started thinking about coaching during college. After teaching four years at Northwood High School, he arrived at Magruder High School in 2011 and has stayed there since. Along with being the head coach, AJ is also a science teacher and girls flag football coach, and he admits he prefers running his own program.
Tim might have the longest coaching résumé of the three. He began coaching immediately after graduating in 2000, volunteering at Wheaton for four years before joining Chris at Blake. From there, he followed his brother to Churchill and Quince Orchard, later becoming head coach at Poolesville for nine years. Today, Tim works as a Special Education Para at Damascus High School and is the varsity wrestling coach at Oakdale High School. This is his 26th year coaching- 13 of them as a head coach.
At different points, the brothers have coached together. Chris and Tim spent about 10 years on the same staff. AJ and Tim coached together for one season at Magruder, which AJ described as “cool”.
All three coaching together? That never happened.
Instead, the rivalry took over.
Chris says he’s 9-1 against AJ’s teams. Tim claims he’s 14-1 versus AJ and 3-0 against Chris. AJ, notably, did not provide a counter-stat.
Chris summed it up best: Tim isn’t in MCPS anymore and AJ “might not like it because he’s lost to both of us so much”
Sibling energy, clearly, never fades.
Behind the jokes and records is real respect. All three brothers stayed in the sport- not for trophies, but for the students. They became educators, mentors, and coaches who passed on lessons learned long ago at Wheaton High School.
When two Tao-lead teams face off, it’s not just another match. Its years of history, family competition, and a rivalry that’s still very much alive.
And yes-someone is definitely keeping score.
