With over 4,000 fans in attendance at Monday’s NWCA All-Star Classic, Oregon wrestling leaders are showing they are serious about saving a Ducks program that is scheduled to be eliminated at the end of this season. It won’t be easy, but with many hardworking, dedicated and passionate people involved, they just might have a chance
By Kip Carlson – For The Wrestling Mall
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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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