By DAN McCOOL
\nREGISTER STAFF WRITER<\/p>\n
Wrestling official Chuck Yagla said he would like to have an NCAA Division I wrestling tournament as good as last season’s.<\/p>\n
The 51-year old Yagla, though, would prefer to not experience the same drama leading up to this season’s event on March 16 in Oklahoma City.<\/p>\n
The former two-time NCAA champion at Iowa – and, in 1976, the Hawkeyes’ first outstanding wrestler of the NCAA tournament – was diagnosed with medication-induced hepatitis in the fall of 2004.<\/p>\n
Yagla said the culprit was likely a non-steroid, anti-inflammatory drug he took for 15 years to alleviate pain and swelling of a herniated disc in his back.<\/p>\n
By the time he returned to officiating last January – Yagla’s weight dropped 20 pounds to close to his 150-pound collegiate wrestling weight. His skin had the jaundiced yellow tint his wife, Sarah, first noticed in his eyes.<\/p>\n
“The hardest part for me was I got so weak, I got to where I couldn’t even do one push-up, “said Yagla, whose strength helped him earn a berth on the freestyle team for the 1980 Olympics that the United States boycotted. “It really got depressing on (the strength) side of it. One thing I always did over the years in the morning was to do push-ups. Not to be able to do one, this was crazy.”<\/p>\n
The doctors never said he might die, but he was getting sicker while awaiting word on the results of a liver biopsy.<\/p>\n
“I was thinking, ‘Gee, this might be the end,’ ” Yagla said. “You have your faith in God and I have a very supportive wife. Once I got those results back and they were pretty sure it was nothing but that medication, that I would get better and it would just take time.”<\/p>\n
Yagla said the back is pretty good now, but he can not take ibuprofen on the tough days. He takes a pill for the pain, and works out two to three times per week to strengthen the back.<\/p>\n
Yagla began his 21st year of officiating with last week’s Northern Iowa-Iowa meet. His schedule takes him from Iowa Conference gymnasiums to NCAA Division I arenas, sometimes in a week. He still looks lean enough to wrestle off for a 157-pound spot.<\/p>\n
Yagla wanted to work his typical 20-25 dates last season, but he had to erase his schedule for November and December.<\/p>\n
“I felt fresher at the end than I normally did, “Yagla said, “and I felt like I had the best national tournament I ever had, as far as an official. This season, I purposely didn’t schedule much in November or December.”<\/p>\n
He will be back in his gray officiating shirt and black pants for the National Duals Jan. 14-15 at the UNI-Dome in Cedar Falls. Yagla could have been working the Midlands Open in Evanston, Ill. Dec. 29-30, but he has more important work on the opening day. His first grandson, Justin Gethman, was born Dec. 29, 2004, so there is a big birthday party.<\/p>\n
Yagla will get to work off the cake by keeping busy in the next three months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former NCAA champion at Iowa overcomes hepatitis to return to mat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrestling"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2B7Di-ub","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wrestlingpod.com\/wrestling-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}