In the latest episode titled ‘Bad Reputation’ they remade Olivia Newton John’s song ‘Lets Get Physical’ and in the video the guys were wearing wrestling singlets and performing dance moves that sometimes resembled what you might see in a wrestling practice.

Depending on how you look at it, Glee may or may not have promoted amateur wrestling. Sure the guys looked like wrestlers, but it was more about the body than the sport. See for yourself.

I don’t think Glee really promoted wrestling, but it may be as close as it gets.

If you want to check out the full episode of Glee, you can catch it on Hulu.

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What was the next step after the University of Oregon announced its plans to drop its Div. I wrestling team in July 2007?

There was no debate for retired University of Oregon head wrestling coach Ron Finley. Something needed to be done, and quick.

“Within four days (of being informed of the decision to end the wrestling program), we had the site, SaveOregonWrestling.org, up and running,” said Finley, who continues to serve as the director of Save Oregon Wrestling.

After all, without a website or some other way to inform the wrestling community, how were they going to get their message out?

“From the very start we knew we needed to do something, we needed a way to easily communicate throughout the entire country,” said Finley, adding, “We needed to get our message out.”

Oregon competed one final wrestling season, running out the string during the 2007-08 year. In spite of strong public support for retaining the program, the university and its athletic director at the time, Pat Kilkenny, allowed the Duck wrestling program to join the list of programs which have been dropped.

The battle to reinstate the Oregon program has continued, and with it, the efficient use of the Save Oregon Wrestling website.

Since the start of the site, there has been constant traffic and massive amounts of support across the nation. The response was more than Finley and the Oregon supporters could have hoped for.

The website offers a chance for wrestling fans from Oregon and across the nation to show their support of wrestling at the University of Oregon by signing an on-line petition. The petition states one goal, the reinstatement of varsity wrestling at Oregon.

As of November 10, the petition had over 7,000 signatures. 7,451 signatures, to be exact.

“The site has kept the country informed of what is going on. Takedown Radio has helped, along with other media outlets. People we don’t even know have either donated or signed the on-line petition,” said Finley. “It really shows people care about wrestling.”

Finley said that hopes remain high since the University has hired a new Athletic Director, Mike Belotti.

The website continues to encourage people to contact Belotti, Univ. of Oregon President Richard Lariviere and Senior Associate Women’s Athletic Director Rene Baumgartner to encourage them to bring back wrestling.

The Save Oregon Wrestling website says: “Make the decision makers devote time to the problem that they have created each and every day. This cannot be a two-day or week deal. We need to stay on them until they reverse their decision! Wrestling is that important to all of us and America.”

With the funds currently pledged and a solid plan to address the team’s budget issues, Finley cannot help but have faith that the dedicated efforts of the wrestling community over the last few years could lead to a reinstatement.

“We will just have to wait and see how the new AD, Mike Belotti, feels about our efforts and proposed budget,” said Finley.

Finley is quick to praise the efforts of cross-state rival Oregon State, which held an endowment dual meet this past weekend, when they faced nationally ranked Boise State and Wisconsin. A crowd of 3,018 attended the competition, and the meet raised $30,000 which went into the Oregon State wrestling endowment fund.

“Every penny spent on admission to the Oregon State dual meet went to a wrestling endowment fund,” said Finley. “If every program could do that, it would be a step in the right direction.”

While reinstating dropped programs has been a challenge on the Div. I level in the past, Finley and all those involved with the effort believe that there might be light at the end of the tunnel at Oregon.

When asked how long he thought it would take to get Oregon wrestling back on the mat, Finley showed no hesitation.

“A couple of years is all it could take, but we are going to have to keep fund raising and fund raising and fund raising,” said Finley.

Oh, and just in case anyone was curious, the petition just received one additional signature. With support from this writer, the total is now up to 7,452.

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Earlier last month, Carson-Newman and MIT reported that they were cutting their intercollegiate wrestling programs. Just this week, Delaware State announced it was eliminating wrestling, reducing its roster of intercollegiate sports from 18 down to 17.

“Dropping the wrestling program was a very difficult decision influenced by several factors,” said acting DSU President Claibourne D. Smith. “Like a number of programs around the nation being discontinued in these economic times, it is with regret that the University can no longer field a wrestling program adequate to University and NCAA expectations.”

During the 2008-2009 season, other college wrestling programs getting the ax have included Lawrence College, Norwich University, Portland State, Rose-Hulman, and Wagner College.

In light of these cuts, the National Wrestling Coaches Association (NWCA) has announced an action plan, working directly with these programs and affiliated groups to see what might be done at each individual school… with an ultimate goal of reinstating programs.

Among the steps that the NWCA is taking is to educate college boards of trustees on the important role that wrestling can serve in helping smaller, private schools with concerns about maintaining enrollment levels that wrestling is a way to maintain and grow overall enrollments, even in today’s challenging economic environment. As the NWCA points out, there are more than 260,000 high school wrestlers in the U.S., but only 260 wrestling programs at four-year colleges… so there is tremendous opportunity for colleges that establish or reinstate a wrestling program to attract students from this sizeable pool.

The NWCA also notes that a number of discontinued programs can be traced back to poor retention and graduation rates among athletes. To address this challenge, the NWCA has retained the consulting services of Mark Gumble, a member of the National Association of Athletic Academic Advisors, a group that is funded by the NCAA to oversee APR improvement strategies.

As a group that serves wrestling coaches, the NWCA is providing direct assistance to coaches in a number of ways, including collaborating directly with the head coach and alumni groups at each of the eight schools that are eliminating wrestling… the establishment of a College Coaching Academy to help coaches enhance their leadership and business skills to protect their programs… and offering mentors to coaches of existing programs that the NWCA has identified as being in danger of elimination.

http://www.examiner.com

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“My expectation is that over the next year or two we are going to see more” cuts of men’s teams, Brand said this week in a telephone interview, “and so I am trying, frankly, to pre-empt the argument against Title IX, an unfair argument, I believe, and dissuade universities from going public with this approach.”

Brand mentioned James Madison and Rutgers , schools that cut teams in 2006-07, and Delaware , where cuts have been discussed, as examples.

“I think they need to be honest about it. Any cuts at this point in sports are certainly going to be tied to financial pressures,” said Brand, who urged schools not to drop any teams, men’s or women’s.

“I would suggest that athletics directors need to spend more smartly,” he said, suggesting cutting costs in travel, facilities, and “expenditures in the highly visible sports.”

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Penn State DuBois seeks an energetic and experienced Wrestling Coach to direct the reintroduction of wrestling on the PSU DuBois Campus. The Head Coach will direct and coordinate the planning, organizing, and coaching of the wrestling program. Responsibilities include but are not limited to: recruitment of student-athletes in accordance with college policy, supervise coaching staff, game coaching, conduct practices, organize team travel, monitor student-athletes academic and social progress, equipment maintenance and purchases, budget management, fundraising, camp and clinic development and implementation, and administrative duties required to develop a competitive wrestling program. Candidates must have coaching and wrestling experience with preference given to those who have demonstrated those abilities at the College Level. Candidate must also show a strong foundation of recruiting and fundraising. All interested applicants need to send a cover letter, resume, and a list of at least three references to PSU DuBois Athletics, Multipurpose Building, Penn State DuBois, DuBois, PA 15801 or email items to sdf14@psu.edu. Search will begin immediately and will continue to be open until position is filled.

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Museum officials have received word the Federal Emergency Management Agency has obligated the bulk of funding necessary for the renovation work to begin.

It’s hoped the museum, which has been closed since the June 10 downtown flood, will reopen in time for the NWCA/Cliff Keen National Duals wrestling tournament at the UNI-Dome Jan. 9-11, said Mike Chapman, the museum’s founder and executive director.

Chapman, accompanied by Gable, the Waterloo-born wrestling legend for whom the museum is named, made the announcement as U.S. Sens. Tom Harkin and Charles Grassley, U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley and other officials surveyed museum damage as part of a tour today of flood damage in eastern Iowa.

“FEMA has obligated enough money that we feel confident in proceeding,” Chapman said. “We’ll be back in business, we hope, by the National Duals. We’re convinced if we get construction started this week we can make it.

“We’ve had tremendous support from both senators, from Congressman Braley,” Chapman said. He said state Rep. Tami Wiencek lent her support on a state level and that Waterloo Mayor Tim Hurley wrote a letter of support to FEMA.

The help has come from more than FEMA, Chapman said. “The wrestling community has been terrific. Waterloo people have stepped up,” he said, including people like Vern and Donna Nelson, who provided the museum with temporary administrative offices in the River Plaza building downtown.

Word of the museum’s plight also spread to Hollywood, Chapman said. Actor William Baldwin, star of “Backdraft” and other motion pictures, and a former high school and collegiate wrestler, provided an undisclosed but “substantial” monetary gift to museum repairs. Former World Wrestling Federation superstar Bret “The Hitman” Hart gave the museum $1,400 raised from signing autographs when he was here this summer as his father, the late Stu Hart, was inducted in the museum’s George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame.

The Cauliflower Alley Club, a nonprofit organization of boxing, pro wrestling and show business people, donated $2,000, and pro wrestler and promoter Harley Race donated $4,000 along with his wife, B.J.

The international amateur wrestling community donated another $20,000, Chapman said.

Wayne Magee Construction of Cedar Falls will perform the renovation work, Chapman said.

The museum relocated from Newton, reopened here in February 2007 and was renamed for Gable, who wrestled for West High School and Iowa State University, won an Olympic gold medal in 1972 and coached the Iowa Hawkeyes to an all-sport record-tying nine consecutive NCAA national championships.

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“Wrestling teaches you how to get off your back. Old Man River put us on our back, but we’re on our feet and fighting to survive.”
- Mike Chapman

The massive water damage in the Midwest has affected countless homes and businesses in Iowa. Unfortunately the Dan Gable International Wrestling Institute & Museum was included.

$250 annual gift for 5 years, $1,250 total.
Donors will receive:
Free lifetime admission to the museum
Save The Museum t-shirt
Dan Gable Asics Gold Poster
Abraham Lincoln or Lou Thesz print

$250 annual gift for 10 years, $2,500 total.
Donors will receive:
Free lifetime admission to the museum
Save The Museum t-shirt Waterloo was one of the many victims of the flooding. We are asking for donations to help restore our fantastic facility. Your assistance is appreciated.

$250 annual gift for 3 years, $750 total.
Donors will receive:
Free lifetime admission to the museum
Save The Museum t-shirt
Dan Gable Asics Gold Poster
Abraham Lincoln or Lou Thesz print
“Match of the Century” print – Gotch/Hackenschmidt

The Dan Gable International Wrestling Institute & Museum is a not-for-profit organization, 501 3(c). Donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law. All monies will go to the restoration and preservation of the wrestling museum.

Please view our website at www.wrestlingmuseum.org

Donations can be sent to:
DGIWIM
303 Jefferson Street
Waterloo, IA 50701

For more information, contact Kent Sesker at 319-233-0745 or kent@wrestlingmuseum.org.

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TEMPE, Ariz. — Arizona State University Vice President for Athletics Lisa Love announced Friday that the athletic department is fully reinstating the sport of varsity wrestling, effective immediately, due to financial support from local civic leadership. The reinstatement of wrestling gives ASU 21 sports in its varsity athletic program.

“It is with great pleasure that I announce the reinstatement of the varsity sport of wrestling at ASU,” says Love. “The wrestling community, both locally and nationally, accepted this as a challenge to do something wonderful for the sport. ASU is forever grateful for that passion and unwavering support. Something special is happening on our campus thanks to civic leadership that cares deeply about ASU wrestling.”

ASU had announced on May 13, 2008 that it was discontinuing the sport of wrestling due to the rising cost of operating a 22-sport varsity program. It was determined at that time that sponsoring a 20-sport program would better fit ASU¹s athletic financial profile. Love indicated at the time that if the wrestling community were able to raise enough financial support the sport could be reinstated. That commitment is there and the sport will continue at Arizona State.

Love said that fundraising for the sport of wrestling will be an ongoing process. The objective is not just to sponsor wrestling as a varsity sport, but to position the sport as one of the top programs in the country.

The Sun Devil wrestling team is a member of the Pacific-10 Conference.

For more information regarding giving to assist the Sun Devil varsity sports programs, visit www.sundevilclub.com.

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By Kip Carlson – For The Wrestling Mall
Comment on this article at info@thewrestlingmall.com

EUGENE, Ore. – Of all the wrestlers who gathered for Monday night’s National Wrestling Coaches Association All-Star Classic, Wade Sauer knew best just what was at stake.

Sauer, the Cal State-Fullerton heavyweight, was at Fresno State when that school cut its wresting program in 2005. So it hit home when the 2007 NWCA All-Star Classic was awarded to Oregon – whose program is on the chopping block and set to be dropped at the end of this season – to serve as a rallying point in the “Save Oregon Wrestling” effort.

“Luckily, they’re aware of what’s happening,” Sauer said after Monday’s meet drew an enthusiastic crowd of 4,380 to the Ducks’ ancient McArthur Court. “It kind of snuck up on us at Fresno. One morning we all got the call that the team had been cut; there was nothing to do about it, it was final. They’ve got a year now to get involved and get support rallied around the nation to support their program and hopefully they will.”

There had been an initial outcry last summer when Oregon announced it would drop wrestling after the 2007-08 season and add baseball for men and competitive cheer for women. Since then, Eugene had been captivated by Oregon’s climb to No. 2 in the national football rankings and quarterback Dennis Dixon’s bid for the Heisman Trophy.

Bringing the All-Star meet to Eugene just as the Ducks are kicking off what could be their final season was a perfect way to regain visibility for the movement to keep a tradition-laden program alive. The lower bowl of the wooden arena was filled; there were contingents of wrestlers and coaches from Oregon State, Portland State, Pacific and Southern Oregon, Clackamas Community College and Southwestern Oregon Community College, along with dozens of high schools.

As the meet wound down with Sauer losing to Tervel Dlagnev of Nebraska-Kearney 11-7, the chant began in the balcony at the south end of McArthur Court: “Save Oregon Wrestling! Save Oregon Wrestling!” By the time the heavyweights finished, the cheer had spread throughout the crowd.

“That was exciting,” Oregon head coach Chuck Kearney said. “And one of the things that we’ve been trying to explain to the university and the athletic department and the president’s office is that the wrestling people are here. And the University of Oregon is one of our state schools that has played a big part in the history of the state of Oregon in wrestling with national champions and All-Americans.”

Oregon is a Wrestling State
“Oregon is a wrestling state, and the state spoke up and showed up tonight. We’re excited to see security having to move people off the floor, and seeing the facilities people wondering about, ‘Gee, do we need to open the second and third balcony?’ Mac Court is a great venue for wrestling and there were a lot of great matches tonight, and we couldn’t be more pleased with it.”

This is where the Ducks’ Shane Webster wrestled en route to a NCAA title just two years ago. The crowd was dotted with hundreds of yellow T-shirts with green lettering proclaiming, “Oregon Wrestling – Just Keep It! – a reference to the old “Just Do It!” motto of Oregon uber-booster Phil Knight’s Nike corporation. The shirts also bore the address of the Web site dedicated to keeping the Ducks on the mat: www.saveoregonwrestling.com

Ron Finley, who coached Oregon from 1970-98, was given a healthy ovation when he was honored before the meet.

Finley has continued to work for the Duck Athletic Fund since leaving coaching, but now his attention is focused on saving the program he guided to national prominence. The size and intensity of Monday’s crowd – on a weeknight, and when the only local wrestlers were involved in exhibition matches before the all-star meet – was encouraging.

“I was glad to see them here two hours before it started,” Finley said. “At 5 o’clock they were coming in to get seats, and that was a great sign – I’ve had so many people come up to me tonight and say, ‘How can we help?’ And, ‘Here’s a check, I want to help donate money and whatever I can do, you let me know.’”

The conversations Finley and others have had with the Oregon athletic department have kept the door open for the possibility of the program continuing beyond this season.

“They definitely haven’t said, ‘No, you’re out, you’re done,’” Finley said. “One thing they want to see is, do we have any support? This is exactly what we’re saying, we do have support. There are lots of fans in this state. Oregon is a great wrestling state – it just is. We’ve had tons of Olympians and national champs; at the high school level, it’s outstanding. This is what we have to show them.

“We can’t really say anything until we have some dual meets. This tournament, some dual meets, the Pac-10s (the conference championship meet will be held in Eugene in 2008) – then we can come to them and say, ‘Okay, we did everything you said. We’ve got fan support, we’ve got all this. We’ve got to get these fans to keep coming back for our meets, and I think they will.”

Finley said Oregon’s athletic department has presented figures on what sort of money it would take to keep the program; Finley disagrees with the number he’s heard.

“Of course, he’s a businessman but I think he expects us to come back and present something to him,” Finley said of UO athletic director Pat Kilkenny. “And when the time is right, we’ll do that.”

The Decision Can Be Changed
Another former head coach who knows something about staving off extinction was also on hand Monday night. Marlin Grahn coached at Portland State from 1985-2006, winning a pair of NCAA Division II national team titles, but PSU tried to cut his program three times in the late 1990s.

“It can be changed,” said Grahn, who is helping with the “Save Oregon Wrestling” effort. It’s going to be a battle. I don’t want people to think it can’t be won.

“Obviously, if we had millions of dollars, we’d save the program. The odds of that happening are slim to none, but there are lots of things we can do – one of them is be visible, call, talk, do the little things that we can. We have all kinds of fundraisers we’re trying to do, but most of it is to try and bring attention to it so they realize how important wrestling is to people. They made these decisions without good information. All the excuses they’re using for why we dropped wrestling are basically null and void. Now they’re using Title IX. But everything comes when they need another reason; they keep coming up with another one.”

Finley would like to see Oregon’s program run off the interest from an endowment. About 40 miles up U.S. Highway 99W, Oregon State uses an endowment set up by former head coach Dale Thomas to pay the scholarship bill for its wrestlers each season and to meet some other expenses, as well. Finley figures it would need an initial endowment of about $5 million.

“Whether we can make $5 million or not, who knows?” Finley said. “But I think the effort is going to be there and we’re not giving up. These guys out here don’t give up on the mat; that’s what makes them great. Wrestlers never give up.”

Minnesota coach J Robinson felt Monday’s meet made a statement to Oregon’s administration about the importance of wrestling at the school and in the community. Given his druthers, Robinson would see the university would come forth with a decision on the sport’s fate sooner rather than later.

“I think the state needs to put the pressure on the athletic director and the president (Dave Frohnmayer) to give them an answer right now,” Robinson said. “They’re playing it out, they’re playing this waiting game and I think it’s a bad game to play. I think the administration owes it to people to give them something right now and demand a yes or no answer.”

“And they’re capable of doing that, because money isn’t the issue,” Robinson continued. “If they can pay $600,000 for the salary of three baseball coaches, then money is not the issue. The administration here owes the people of the State of Oregon an answer now. They owe it from the standpoint of, if you’re an administrator, have the courage; if you’re going to say no, have it and take the heat.”

Keeping Program Better For All Programs in State
An onlooker who had two perspectives on Oregon’s possible elimination of wrestling was Kevin Roberts. He was a two-time All-American for the Ducks in 1994-95 at 118 pounds; he’s now an assistant coach at Oregon State. Despite what some might think, losing your in-state rival won’t help your program.

“The first few weeks it happened, there were people saying, ‘Oh, that will help you guys. Are you guys happy about that? You could pick some of those guys up,’” Roberts said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Every sport needs rivalries. You love your sport, first and foremost; you respect your sport and what it has given you. You want to see your sport strong and to see other people have the opportunities you had. For us, we don’t want this program to go away. This will hurt us more than it will help us. You might get a guy or two who would have come here, but it hurts you in the other regard of keeping wrestling out in the forefront and ultimately providing opportunities for more kids.”

Wrestling already has too few opportunities at the college level, Roberts said, when the number of youth and high school wrestlers around the country is taken into consideration.

“To me, it’s unacceptable,” Roberts said. “If it was any other sport, if there were hardly any volleyball teams or softball teams out there, I think people rightfully would think we have to have this opportunity, and that’s what we’re asking for these young men.”

Roberts was one of several dozen former Oregon wrestlers who gathered on the mat after Monday’s meet to take a multi-generational “team picture” of Duck alumni. Around them, fans and athletes mingled well past the final match of the night.

“This is a kickoff event to get the wrestling community together,” Kearney said. “As I gaze across the floor, I see 2,000 people still here on the floor talking and sharing ideas and revitalizing that commitment to the sport. We think this is a battle that can be won, but we need help. We need help by people showing up. I get asked all the time, ‘How are you going to do it?’ The bottom line is, we’re going to do it because a group of people get together, and the people who can make the financial contributions, they make the financial contributions; the people that don’t have the wherewithal to do stuff like that, they show up and watch us wrestle.

“In a metropolitan area of 250,000 people, we ought to have people in this place watching wrestling,” says Kearney. “We have a good young team that will be exciting to watch, and we hope this event will serve as that kickoff and that some eyes got opened up here in Eugene about the value of wrestling and the fact that there is a revenue stream that has been untapped in Oregon and it is college wrestling.”

You get the feeling Sauer, the Cal State-Fullerton heavyweight, will be watching the battle and will be interested to see the progress when he returns to McArthur Court for the Pacific-10 Championships.

“This is definitely something the community needs to get involved with,” Sauer said. “That was one of the things we lacked, we didn’t have much community involvement and we lost our sport. It looks like these guys are off to a good start as far as getting everybody involved. It looks like they might be able to save it, and I sure hope we can.”

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The clouds hanging over the State Capital building in Harrisburg, Pa., on Wednesday morning shrouded the city skyline and blanketed it with a damp chill.

There’s also been a damp chill shrouding college wrestling, not specifically in Pennsylvania, but nationwide. But the 34 college wrestling programs in Pennsylvania have not been devoid of being cut, as witnessed by Slippery Rock cutting its historic program two years ago.

Initially, Slippery Rock was to drop eight sports as a cost-cutting move, five men’s sports and three women’s sports, but after a Title IX complaint was filed, the school was forced to keep the three women’s sports while the men’s sports were left with nothing – including wrestling.

Joined by former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R) and former Iowa wrestling Coach Dan Gable, the National Wrestling Coaches Association met with the Pennsylvania General Assembly to discuss options for legislation to solidify the athletic opportunities that currently exist in the state.

Hastert, Gable, NWCA Executive Director Mike Moyer and a host of representatives met in the Majority Caucus Room in a meeting headed up by Rep. Todd Eachus (D), Chairman of the House Policy Committee.

Eachus’ son Nate won the Pennsylvania AAA state championship last season at 189 pounds as a junior at Hazleton High School.

Wednesday’s methodology was simple.

“The purpose of the meeting is just to raise awareness of the important role that intercollegiate sports teams play in developing the next generation of high school, middle school and elementary school teachers and coaches,” said Moyer. “We have a national shortage of wrestling coaches throughout the country and the best way to increase that depleted pool is by having more college programs.”

Hastert, who was honored after the meeting in the main house with a standing ovation, also pointed out the importance of intercollegiate sports as a building block for future mentors.

“Our primary purpose here today is to explain the important role that intercollegiate wrestling teams play in our state-funded schools,” said Hastert, a wrestling coach in Illinois for 16 years prior to joining Congress.

The target on Pennsylvania, specifically the 14 state universities that fall under the umbrella of the Department of Higher/Adult Education, was two-fold.

“We’re located in Pennsylvania and it’s a good place to start,” said Moyer. “Quite frankly, we’re trying to test the waters to find out what strategies would be the most effective that could be implicated in other states.”

The National Wrestling Coaches Association is headquartered in Manheim, roughly a half-hour away from Harrisburg.

“There’s 9,000 kids that wrestle in Pennsylvania and we’ve lost six (State System of Higher Education University) programs,” said Gable. “Six programs — various generations of mentors … gone.”

“People have a lot of issues in life and making sure that they are aware of one that’s a pretty big issue to a lot of people,” said Gable. “Wrestling didn’t just start yesterday, there’s a lot of people involved in this. The educational process that took place in that meeting today will make people more aware there’s some things that are going on because there’s an agenda or there’s an easy way to get there or simply somebody has a preference.”

“Is it the right thing to do or have they done good homework and research to make sure it’s the right thing to do?” asked Gable. “Any time you already have something established, base-built, you want to continue to keep the structure and not have people leaving and going to other states that are a long ways away. It’s just the right thing to do. When you have something going, make sure it’s able to continue throughout its entirety.”

Eight of the 14 state-funded schools – known primarily as the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference – field wrestling programs. Of those, Edinboro, Bloomsburg, East Stroudsburg, Millersville, Clarion and Lock Haven field Division I wrestling programs.

Slippery Rock, noted earlier as officially eliminating five sports, is a member of the PSAC. A big point of contention for Hastert was there was little warning to the lawmakers and legislature that makes educational policy and appropriations.

“It has to be the state legislature that knows these state-funded institutions can’t slough off and lose these programs,” said Hastert.

Gable pointed to his youth and the decision he made between two sports was primarily because of a mentor, someone he trusted.

“I had to make a choice between swimming and wrestling, obviously I chose the right sport,” recalled Gable. “I had great people that mentored me along the way that made sure I could develop. My junior high coach was also a math teacher.”

The cutting of sports, especially Olympic sports, fired up the 21-time Big Ten champion coach. Gable pointed out that his home state of Iowa was known for two primary things – farming and wrestling.

“I don’t understand somebody would try to eliminate something when that’s the only thing that could get noticed,” said Gable. “Around the world, they know wrestling; they know Easton (High School) and coach Steve Powell. They know Jack Spates and the state of Pennsylvania.”

“They know Stan Dziedzic from Slippery Rock was a national champion,” continued Gable. “Stan Dziedzic was a world champion. That’s 144 countries that know who he is.”

“The most decorated U.S. wrestler of all-time in terms of world and Olympic medals, Bruce Baumgartner, is the Athletic Director at (state-funded) Edinboro,” said Gable.

Hastert also used Slippery Rock as an example, referring again to the importance that teachers and coaches have on developing minds.

“Fred Powell was the coach at Slippery Rock for years and years and created something, world-renowned wrestlers,” said Hastert. “He was gotten to by a math teacher and a guidance counselor. Because they had the coach, they were able to turn the key. Those are the ones that you lose.”

There is some light at the end of the tunnel after Wednesday’s meeting.

“One of the most important things I heard out of this meeting was the notion of putting together a legislative oversight to make sure that any future decisions about sports would first be taken to the legislature so they can be diligent before decisions like that are made,” said Moyer.

Eachus, whose spacious office had DVD’s of his son’s matches sitting near his television and his computer desktop decorated with Nate’s hand getting raised after his state title, spoke favorably of the ideas being presented.

“We need to create a framework to monitor these changes that might shut a program down,” he said. “With this bipartisan work group that we can focus on why we’re shutting these programs do, whatever the sport might be. With the amount of wrestling activity in the commonwealth, it couldn’t be a lack of interest.”

Several representatives had wrestling backgrounds, including Eachus, Sen. Bob Robbins (R), Rep. Mike Hanna (D), Rep. Rich Grucela (D), and former EIWA wrestling official Rep. Richard Geist (R).

As Gable railed off several Pennsylvania natives that have gone on to do great things, Grucela had a double fist-pump at one point.

“I taught at Easton for 30 years,” said Grucela, addressing Gable. “I know you know one of my former students was Bobby Weaver. Whatever we can do, I come from a school that’s rich in wrestling tradition like (Sen. Bob Robbins) here. I would do whatever, having been in the classroom.”

Grucela’s educational background within the state also was a plus and, according to Moyer, is something wrestlers have a knack for doing.

“Many of them (representatives) were born out of education and that education starts the Pennsylvania state-funded schools,” said Moyer. “It’s not about winning national championships, this is about broad-based opportunities so we can increase the teachers, coaches and mentors into the community. If Pennsylvania doesn’t do it, our best and brightest kids are going to go to other states and get trained in others states and they’re going to stay in other states.”

Moyer also brought up his own experience as a wrestler at West Chester, one of the 14 state schools referenced in the meeting.

“While there was a lot of talk about the recent loss of Slippery Rock University’s wrestling program, there needs to be more discussion about bringing back the intercollegiate wrestling program at West Chester University,” said Moyer. “Historically, West Chester University has a rich tradition of serving the sport of wrestling as evidenced by the following facts: one of the largest wrestling manufacturers in the country, Brute/adidas, is run by West Chester alum John Purnell. Several of our nation’s top high school coaches, such as Steve Powell at Easton, are West Chester alums.”

It’s the state-funded targets that will potentially lay the groundwork for state legislatures to get involved around the country, much like Georgia did with a house resolution this summer, New Mexico did to kickstart wrestling and women’s rodeo at New Mexico Highlands University and New York did to re-instate Binghamton’s wrestling program.

Pennsylvania’s the litmus test.

“There’s so much history with respect to wrestling,” said Moyer. “There’s not many sports where you can have this little state-supported school competing with the major Division I programs. Wrestling’s that entrenched in our sports culture. Could you imagine Edinboro playing Oklahoma State in football? It doesn’t happen and in wrestling it happens all the time.”

Gable concurred.

“Pennsylvania has the most (wrestling) colleges of anybody and they still have the numbers that say we have a small window of opportunity to stay within the state,” said Gable. “We want to solidify what we have and build from there.”

“We took away the Division II and III champs with the chance to go to the Division I championships, but they still have the ability to go Division I as a classification as a sport,” said Gable. “It takes the little guy and makes a big guy out of them. When someone from these smaller institutions and compete with the level, it makes national news. For example, Gregor Gillespie (Edinboro). It’s one of these things it just makes your school that much more famous, that much more news from a positive point of view. That type of publicity doesn’t hurt any institution.”

But it still came back to teaching and coaching and physical education.

“These wrestlers became the mentors, they became the teachers, the coaches for generations,” said Hastert. “When Slippery Rock closed the store, we lose generations of future mentors. We lose 16,000 kids on our street corners, neighborhoods and in the darkest rooms of our most affluent neighborhoods. When kids have something to do, something to point to, when they’re on a team, when they have an incentive to do bigger things. They don’t get in trouble. We need to have mentors, young people that are going to take a big part out of their life to help others. They’re the coaches, that’s what we lose when we lose these teams.”

“What do you do with your P.E. programs, your kids program to make sure kids are healthy?” asked Hastert. “You’ve really developed the idea of how to fight kids who are not in shape, who are obese. If people stay in shape, they learn that in elementary school. These are programs you are looking into and trying to put together.”

The battle in fighting childhood obesity is also affected. Who are the P.E. teachers … mentors and more than likely, former college athletes.

“You have to make sure you protect all teams, not just wrestling, but all teams,” said Gable.

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It’s a homecoming that many are celebrating. On July 13, first-year athletic director Pat Kilkenny announced that Ducks baseball will return to the University of Oregon after a 26-year hiatus. But the news ruffled more than a few feathers in Eugene and beyond. That’s because Kilkenny also revealed that the upcoming wrestling season would be the school’s last. “My second-favorite sport is baseball, so I think adding baseball is a magnificent thing for the University of Oregon to do,” says former UO wrestling All-American and current head coach Chuck Kearney, who has dedicated more than two decades of his life to the program. “We’re struggling to understand why it has to come at the cost of wrestling.”

And so a bittersweet saga has unfolded, complete with the subplot surrounding women’s competitive cheer, which like baseball will assume varsity sport status in 2008-09. Kilkenny, a former business leader and high-ranking UO donor, says the shakeup makes sense for an athletic department that — despite its position among fewer than two dozen in the nation that sustain themselves financially — remains “fragile.”

“The guarantee we made to our administration is that we would continue to take steps forward from a financial perspective,” says Kilkenny, who met in April with members of an ad hoc committee of potential donors led by former UO baseball coach Mel Krause. “The baseball community not only had to provide operating capital for the reinstatement of baseball, it also had to provide us with operating capital for the additional women’s sport. So we had leverage.”

Leverage is not a foreign term to wrestlers, but Krause’s baseball support network clearly got the jump on the local wrestling establishment. “The statement that the baseball community made spoke loud and clear,” Kilkenny says. “We had 150 financial commitments that we didn’t solicit but that were part of this ad hoc group. And out of that group, we confirmed only one donor as having been meaningful to the university in the past. Part of my charge is to expand the donor base, so that was pretty compelling.”

The reorganization will reportedly increase the athletic department’s 2007-08 budget by $300,000, as the new programs are established well in advance of actual competition. “As a wrestling coach, you understand that when sports are listed and wrestling is at the bottom, it’s not necessarily because of alphabetical order,” Kearney says. “It’s not a priority at a lot of schools, and the wrestling community has allowed that to happen, and we need to do something about that — not just at Oregon, but at all schools. There are hard decisions that have to be made, and we understand that. But we much prefer tightening the belt to eliminating a program.”

One thing on which Kearney and Kilkenny can agree is that UO wrestlers lack a permanent campus home. They surrendered their wrestling room to a new athletic training center in November, and practiced last season in gym space on loan from the UO Student Recreation Center. But when asked if his student-athletes were beginning to feel like kids at the card table during Thanksgiving dinner, Kearny says, “The mentality inherent to our sport is that we’re not real concerned about lavish training facilities. Our needs are pretty simple — a room with mats in it.”

Kilkenny characterizes the program as saddled with much greater physical-plant deficiencies, however. “We needed a solution that was going to require, by our best guess, somewhere between $4 million and $7 million to build a practice facility for our wrestling group,” he says. “So we started looking at that, and with the baseball group talking about their interests, that’s when we decided to put together a committee to analyze our sports offerings.”

Perhaps no two sports are as different as wrestling and competitive cheer, and Kilkenny sees them on diverging trend lines — citing the significant number of collegiate wrestling programs eliminated in recent years, while claiming competitive cheer is “one of the fastest-growing sports that women participate in nationally.”

According to NCAA participation statistics, varsity wrestling has experienced a net loss of 133 programs in all three divisions since 1981-82, the biggest drop by far of any sport. In 2003, the University of Maryland became the first NCAA Division I-A school to sponsor competitive cheer as a varsity sport, yet the NCAA still doesn’t sanction it as such. “No doubt we’re significantly out in front of the crowd” in terms of competitive cheer, Kilkenny says. “We hope that since Oregon does tend to do some innovative things on the sports side, we’ll foster more interest on the West Coast.”

Meanwhile, an estimated 33,000 high school wrestlers are already competing in the Pacific Northwest, with ever-diminishing avenues for advancement. Oregon will become the latest of six Pac-10 Conference institutions to drop wrestling since 1979. Once it does, only eight four-year colleges in the region will offer those 33,000 wrestlers roughly 200 total roster spots. Says Kearney, “In my mind, that’s the bigger crime, that a market that’s out there is being denied opportunities.”

Kearney, who coached an individual NCAA champion in 2006, adds that he is encouraged — even touched — that the two high school wrestlers who signed letters of intent to attend Oregon will forgo their option to withdraw and instead join a full roster of returnees (existing wrestlers were free to transfer without penalty). “One of the parents said that in this recruiting process she liked Oregon best for its academics, the kids in the program and the honesty and integrity of the coaching staff,” Kearney says. “Her take on it was that one year of that was better than none.”

Despite having both shoulders to the mat and the count running, supporters of Oregon wrestling still hope for a reversal. “I don’t believe that wrestling is gone at the University of Oregon,” says Trent Kroll, head wrestling coach at Hood River (Ore.) Valley High School. “I think we can and will get it back, but we’re going to have to work hard at it now.”

“Right now, we’re attempting to make ourselves financially sustainable, to take that burden out of the argument so we can be looked at again,” Kearney says. “We have another season, and we’re obviously looking to put our time and energies into coaching that team and making it the best season we possibly can. But the rest of the time we’re going to spend trying to raise money.”

An independently launched website (saveoregonwrestling.com) began accepting online donations July 20. Meanwhile, Kilkenny’s late summer was spent searching for a head baseball coach, touring ballparks, and studying collaborative relationships between collegiate and professional teams. He also reviewed written correspondence from within the wrestling community, as more than 1,000 pieces arrived on his desk and that of UO president Dave Frohnmayer in the two weeks following the announcement. “They were from all over the United States,” Kilkenny says. “A lot of the input we received was very thoughtful and that — along with the impact on our student-athletes, our coaches and their families — has made this one of the tougher things I’ve done in my life.”

Kearney contends that the very nature of his sport — perhaps more than any other — prepares individuals for life’s challenges. “In wrestling, you have to be resilient to be successful,” he says. “You have to be able to take tough times and bounce back, and you have to be accountable. In my estimation, that’s what makes wrestling so valuable in our educational process. We need those traits in our communities. I think that Mr. Kilkenny and Dr. Frohnmayer are seeing that demonstrated, and I’m hoping that it makes them rethink.”

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It’s a homecoming that many are celebrating. On July 13, first-year athletic director Pat Kilkenny announced that Ducks baseball will return to the University of Oregon after a 26-year hiatus. But the news ruffled more than a few feathers in Eugene and beyond. That’s because Kilkenny also revealed that the upcoming wrestling season would be the school’s last. “My second-favorite sport is baseball, so I think adding baseball is a magnificent thing for the University of Oregon to do,” says former UO wrestling All-American and current head coach Chuck Kearney, who has dedicated more than two decades of his life to the program. “We’re struggling to understand why it has to come at the cost of wrestling.”

And so a bittersweet saga has unfolded, complete with the subplot surrounding women’s competitive cheer, which like baseball will assume varsity sport status in 2008-09. Kilkenny, a former business leader and high-ranking UO donor, says the shakeup makes sense for an athletic department that — despite its position among fewer than two dozen in the nation that sustain themselves financially — remains “fragile.”

“The guarantee we made to our administration is that we would continue to take steps forward from a financial perspective,” says Kilkenny, who met in April with members of an ad hoc committee of potential donors led by former UO baseball coach Mel Krause. “The baseball community not only had to provide operating capital for the reinstatement of baseball, it also had to provide us with operating capital for the additional women’s sport. So we had leverage.”

Leverage is not a foreign term to wrestlers, but Krause’s baseball support network clearly got the jump on the local wrestling establishment. “The statement that the baseball community made spoke loud and clear,” Kilkenny says. “We had 150 financial commitments that we didn’t solicit but that were part of this ad hoc group. And out of that group, we confirmed only one donor as having been meaningful to the university in the past. Part of my charge is to expand the donor base, so that was pretty compelling.”

The reorganization will reportedly increase the athletic department’s 2007-08 budget by $300,000, as the new programs are established well in advance of actual competition. “As a wrestling coach, you understand that when sports are listed and wrestling is at the bottom, it’s not necessarily because of alphabetical order,” Kearney says. “It’s not a priority at a lot of schools, and the wrestling community has allowed that to happen, and we need to do something about that — not just at Oregon, but at all schools. There are hard decisions that have to be made, and we understand that. But we much prefer tightening the belt to eliminating a program.”

One thing on which Kearney and Kilkenny can agree is that UO wrestlers lack a permanent campus home. They surrendered their wrestling room to a new athletic training center in November, and practiced last season in gym space on loan from the UO Student Recreation Center. But when asked if his student-athletes were beginning to feel like kids at the card table during Thanksgiving dinner, Kearny says, “The mentality inherent to our sport is that we’re not real concerned about lavish training facilities. Our needs are pretty simple — a room with mats in it.”

Kilkenny characterizes the program as saddled with much greater physical-plant deficiencies, however. “We needed a solution that was going to require, by our best guess, somewhere between $4 million and $7 million to build a practice facility for our wrestling group,” he says. “So we started looking at that, and with the baseball group talking about their interests, that’s when we decided to put together a committee to analyze our sports offerings.”

Perhaps no two sports are as different as wrestling and competitive cheer, and Kilkenny sees them on diverging trend lines — citing the significant number of collegiate wrestling programs eliminated in recent years, while claiming competitive cheer is “one of the fastest-growing sports that women participate in nationally.”

According to NCAA participation statistics, varsity wrestling has experienced a net loss of 133 programs in all three divisions since 1981-82, the biggest drop by far of any sport. In 2003, the University of Maryland became the first NCAA Division I-A school to sponsor competitive cheer as a varsity sport, yet the NCAA still doesn’t sanction it as such. “No doubt we’re significantly out in front of the crowd” in terms of competitive cheer, Kilkenny says. “We hope that since Oregon does tend to do some innovative things on the sports side, we’ll foster more interest on the West Coast.”

Meanwhile, an estimated 33,000 high school wrestlers are already competing in the Pacific Northwest, with ever-diminishing avenues for advancement. Oregon will become the latest of six Pac-10 Conference institutions to drop wrestling since 1979. Once it does, only eight four-year colleges in the region will offer those 33,000 wrestlers roughly 200 total roster spots. Says Kearney, “In my mind, that’s the bigger crime, that a market that’s out there is being denied opportunities.”

Kearney, who coached an individual NCAA champion in 2006, adds that he is encouraged — even touched — that the two high school wrestlers who signed letters of intent to attend Oregon will forgo their option to withdraw and instead join a full roster of returnees (existing wrestlers were free to transfer without penalty). “One of the parents said that in this recruiting process she liked Oregon best for its academics, the kids in the program and the honesty and integrity of the coaching staff,” Kearney says. “Her take on it was that one year of that was better than none.”

Despite having both shoulders to the mat and the count running, supporters of Oregon wrestling still hope for a reversal. “I don’t believe that wrestling is gone at the University of Oregon,” says Trent Kroll, head wrestling coach at Hood River (Ore.) Valley High School. “I think we can and will get it back, but we’re going to have to work hard at it now.”

“Right now, we’re attempting to make ourselves financially sustainable, to take that burden out of the argument so we can be looked at again,” Kearney says. “We have another season, and we’re obviously looking to put our time and energies into coaching that team and making it the best season we possibly can. But the rest of the time we’re going to spend trying to raise money.”

An independently launched website (saveoregonwrestling.com) began accepting online donations July 20. Meanwhile, Kilkenny’s late summer was spent searching for a head baseball coach, touring ballparks, and studying collaborative relationships between collegiate and professional teams. He also reviewed written correspondence from within the wrestling community, as more than 1,000 pieces arrived on his desk and that of UO president Dave Frohnmayer in the two weeks following the announcement. “They were from all over the United States,” Kilkenny says. “A lot of the input we received was very thoughtful and that — along with the impact on our student-athletes, our coaches and their families — has made this one of the tougher things I’ve done in my life.”

Kearney contends that the very nature of his sport — perhaps more than any other — prepares individuals for life’s challenges. “In wrestling, you have to be resilient to be successful,” he says. “You have to be able to take tough times and bounce back, and you have to be accountable. In my estimation, that’s what makes wrestling so valuable in our educational process. We need those traits in our communities. I think that Mr. Kilkenny and Dr. Frohnmayer are seeing that demonstrated, and I’m hoping that it makes them rethink.”

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This is an open letter to Dave Frohnmayer, president of University of Oregon, and Pat Kilkenny, athletic director of University of Oregon, about the recent decision to cut wrestling from the university’s roster of interscholastic sports.

Like both of you, I come from a unique place in America, small-town Oregon. Because of our shared roots, we can agree a state is more than its major cities. We also know that small towns – the sort of places we came from – make Oregon special.

In many small towns, wrestling season is the only season on the calendar. As wrestling goes, so goes the town. Burns wouldn’t be complete without a wrestling parade. Through wrestling, kids from small-town schools gain a certain inner quality they carry the rest of their lives.

With the home gym packed for a duel, friends of wrestlers see firsthand one of their own mix it up on the mat. No helmets or gloves or cleats. They see a guy in shoes and a singlet go head-to-head with someone just like them.

At the end, win or lose, the friends see their buddy walk over and put his warm-ups back on. After a loss they see him standing alone. It’s this guy they remember when they have to take a stand.
A wrestler is more akin to regular students, someone they can relate to. He’s in the science lab, playing trombone in band, doing the extras. He runs an extra mile, works an extra hour. That he asks so much of himself encourages his friends to do the same.

You’ve both seen these kids on Oregon college campuses. Kids with a little more bounce in their step, fresher gas in their tanks. These are the kids you want to point to as University of Oregon graduates. They are Ducks for life, and you don’t want to lose them.

Young wrestlers from small towns throughout Oregon have their hearts set on joining the tradition of Duck Wrestling. That is their dream.

In North Bend, for example, the dream began with Coach Dave Abraham. He wanted guys who could cut it in Eugene. He sent many who tried. If you were good enough, you might be a Duck. In the last few years of his coaching career, even Coach Abraham became a Duck.

High school wrestling needs the dream of University of Oregon Wrestling.

Robin Reed, arguably the greatest American amateur wrestler, came from Portland’s Franklin High School. On his travels before the 1924 Olympics, he stopped at Iowa State long enough to teach proper wrestling.

Richard J. Sanders of Lincoln High School headed for Russia after the 1972 Olympics to show them how the local boy works the mat. Sanders and Fred Fozzard of Marshall High were the first American World Freestyle Champions.

They are wrestling history, and they belong to us, as much as Duck Wrestling belongs to the greater wrestling family. University of Southern California won’t cut football and UCLA won’t cut basketball, sports with distinct associations to those schools. Wrestling preserves a unique quality in Oregon, one of only seven states where both name universities have teams.

Duck Wrestling isn’t ready for the archives. A successful UO wrestling team is icing on the cake of a thriving athletic department. Please don’t scrape it off.

David Gillaspie of Tigard is a former wrestler for North Bend High School, class of 1973, and a wrestling fan.

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This is bad news not just for Oregon, but for wrestling in general, as athletic directors seem to be on a cutting spree these days and who knows which program will be on the chopping block next. Furthermore, if wrestling at Oregon is dissolved, it puts the whole Pac-10 conference at risk, based on having too few PAC 10 schools sponsoring wrestling.

If you have a minute this afternoon to visit the new website we just created — http://www.saveoregonwrestling.com — and sign the petition that would be great. If you have 10 minutes, please review the speaking points under ‘important facts’ on the website and write a letter to the administration demanding that wrestling be reinstated.

Please pass this along to any other members of the wrestling community that would like to get involved, or even non-wrestlers who would take the time to sign the petition. If you live in Oregon and are interested in participating in rallies and other meetings, email Kevin Roberts at keviroberts@hotmail.com, as he is the point person on the efforts to save the Oregon Program and will have the most up-to-date information.

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