Attendance has been hurting at national team duals meet
The Cliff Keen National Duals have never been a good draw and this year’s event was no exception.
No matter where the duals have been held — even Iowa — there hasn’t been a clamor for tickets and some of the top teams (Iowa and Iowa State this year) stay away.
We can understand the thinking by some teams. They don’t want to end up wrestling the same team a couple of times each year.
Iowa State and Oklahoma State meet tonight in Ames and there’s a good chance they would have tangled last weekend in Cleveland.
Of course, the poor attendance at the duals this year can be attributed to weather (plenty of snow) and competition from two high school events in the Cleveland area. The Mayfield Super Eight (featuring five of the top high schools in Ohio) and the St. Edward’s Duals (St. Ed’s against Davison, Mich. and St. Paris Graham) had to hurt the attendance at the duals.
The duals move back to the midwest next year — setting up in the UNI Dome at Northern Iowa.
Here’s hoping that Iowa and Iowa State will be among the teams there — if not, attendance likely won’t be any better than in previous years.
Seeking to host
Northern Iowa is also looking to be the host for the NCAA Championships in 2008, 2009, 2010 or 2011.
UNI hosted the event in 1997 and more than 90,000 attended as Dan Gable’s Hawks won the title in Gable’s last year in the corner. The school is offering the NCAA $1.41 million to bring the nationals back to Cedar Falls.
This year’s championship returns to St. Louis. Next year will see the title decided in Oklahoma City and the Palace at Auburn Hills, Mich. is the site the following year.
In recent years, the NCAA panel that awards the championships have taken the event off college campuses and into big cities. They contend there’s better transportation, hotels and entertainment in big cities.
What will be Northern Iowa’s competition? St. Louis would like to be a permanent site and Kansas City, Fresno, Calif., and Des Moines, Iowa, are the likely bidders.
Rick Hartzell, the athletic director at Northern Iowa, told the Waterloo (Iowa) Courier, “…We think the thing ought to be on campus every four years. That is where wrestling is based, on campus. It is based at the University of Iowa, Oklahoma State, Northern Iowa, and other places. So I don’t think it should become a city-arena event, and I think a lot of people agree with that.”
Well, one of the people who disagree with Hartzell, formerly the athletic director at Bucknell and a big-time college basketball official, is me. We’ve been to 30 or so NCAA championships and side with the group that says take the championships the big cities.
Our favorite? Minneapolis-St. Paul.
The Trenge incident
Unless you’ve been out of the country or on a cruise, you’ve probably heard of the second disqualification of Lehigh 197-pounder Jon Trenge for his actions in a bout with Minnesota’s Matt Koz in the national duals.
Details are sketchy but apparently Trenge hit Koz with an open hand during a scuffle. Trenge was disqualified, Lehigh forfeited the heavyweight bout to Minnesota and lost the dual meet.
This comes on the heels of Trenge’s disqualification at Penn State on Jan. 7.
Trenge has an unsual problem — he wears goggles to protect his eyes because of a detached retina condition, and there have been claims that wrestlers go after the goggles when they wrestle Trenge.
Given that situation, we would hope that officials pay extra attention (not favoring Trenge) to opponents going after Trenge’s goggles and eyes in an illegal way. But the goggles are a beacon, just like tape on a leg, for an opponent.
Wrestling is not a non-contact sport and there is always a certain amount of pushing of the head. Should Trenge’s opponents be penalized because he chooses to wear the goggles?
We wonder how Trenge would have handled the situation had he made the Olympic team last summer. Some 32-year-old Bulgarian wrestler would not have taken it easy on Trenge and his goggles.
And lastly, Trenge should learn to either harness his aggression or get out of the sport. There’s no cause for hitting an opponent. It’s not the WWE.
Mat burns
Fresno State coach Dennis DeLiddo will retire after the season, his 24th with the Bulldogs. DeLiddo, who producted 27 All-Americans, told the Fesno (Calif.) Bee that the stress of losing is just too much for him to take.
The leading contender to replace him is Gerry Abas, a former four-time All-America and 10-year assistant coach with Fresno State.
The Big Ten drought is over at Northwestern. The Wildcats won their first conference dual in five years with a 27-10 win over Purdue last Saturday. The last Northwestern Big Ten win was Jan. 28, 2000, against Ohio State.
Iowa beat Wisconsin 19-14 last weekend, its 31st in a row against the Badgers.
John Huckaby writes a weekly college wrestling column for the Centre Daily Times. He can be reached at jhuck@ptd.
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