Within moments of the announcement on July 13 that Oregon’s wrestling program would be discontinued after the 2007-08 season, the campaign to save the team began. As soon as the question, “Were any other sports considered” for removal was answered “no,” and reporters asked if there was anything that could be done to save the program (another negative answer), the campaign to save a team with more than 50 years of history on campus was underway.
It started just as soon as the press conference ended – before that, even, as a pair of athletic, stocky men in black and orange polo shirts with Oregon State wrestling logos asked a question of Athletic Director Pat Kilkenny. One of them – Kevin Roberts, a two-time All-American as a Duck and currently an assistant coach at Oregon State – told the gathered media throng afterwards of the disappointment he felt that his alma mater was cutting the sport he loved.
“In the grand scheme of multi, multi, multi-million dollar budgets, it doesn’t take much to go out front (of Autzen Stadium and the Casanova Center) and see the landscape and architecture to know that it looks a little different than Oregon State,” Roberts told reporters after the press conference. “There’s a lot of money pumping through here and if they wanted to support wrestling and do the right thing, they could.”
Roberts has spearheaded a campaign to save the team – including starting a Web site, Saveoregonwrestling.com, to “ensure the future of wrestling not only at the University of Oregon, but at all age levels and universities in the great state of Oregon.” The Web site also details the group’s plans to take donations, with the stated goal as raising $4 million. The group states on the Donations page that Kilkenny said that was the amount it would take to help take care of “funding and facilities” and possibly retain the team. In press materials provided at the time of the July 13 announcement, the athletic department listed Oregon’s wrestling budget as $629,000.
Kilkenny admitted at the July 13 press conference that facilities was one of the biggest hurdles facing the team right now. “They have a facilities challenge. We were trying to reconcile that as part of our reorganization. That was problematic,” Kilkenny said.
The facilities issue stems all the way back to last November, when the athletic department announced they would be remodeling the wrestling team’s room of 15 years at the Casanova Center into a training and treatment center for all of Oregon’s athletics teams. The wrestling team moved into one of the rooms in the Student Recreation Center for the remainder of last season.
A factor mentioned by the athletic department as reason to remove wrestling is lack of competition and youth participation. An athletic department fact sheet cites that more than 100 NCAA schools have added baseball teams in the last decade, while also stating that 400 junior colleges, colleges and universities have discontinued wrestling since 1980. However, facts provided by the National Wrestling Coaches Association and listed on Saveoregonwrestling.com state that in the Pacific Northwest, there are 33,000 high school wrestlers and only 270 collegiate roster spots available among nine college programs. Further proof of a depth of talent, according to NWCA numbers, is that there are 250,000 high school wrestlers for only 220 NCAA wrestling programs.
Another factor cited by Kilkenny on the July 13 announcement was the lack of Pacific-10 Conference opponents for the team to compete against. Only four teams – Oregon, Oregon State, Arizona State and Stanford – out of the ten-team Pac-10 for wrestling are schools that compete in the conference in other sports. Boise State, Cal Poly, Cal State Bakersfield, Cal State Fullerton, Portland State and UC Davis are the other schools that compete in the Pac-10 for wrestling. As pointed out in many media outlets, the new competitive cheerleading team does not have Pac-10 competition or NCAA recognition.
Oregon has been competitive in recent years. Despite finishing eighth at the Pac-10 tournament last season, and winning only seven dual meets, two wrestlers – Justin Pearch and Ronnie Lee – competed at the NCAA Tournament last March. Shane Webster also won an NCAA championship in his weight class in 2006. All-time, Oregon has accumulated a 487-364-15 dual meet record since the 1953-54 season, 69 individual conference championships, two NCAA national champions, and four Olympians.
For its own part, Oregon’s wrestling team is trying to focus on what may be their last season. “Right now we’re pointing toward next season and then we’ll worry about what opportunities exist after that,” Chuck Kearney, Oregon’s head coach, said in a prepared statement. And wrestling’s supporters in Eugene and throughout the state, despite obvious reasons to give baseball’s supporters a dirty glare, want both sports to thrive.
On Saveoregonwrestling.com, the point is punctuated: “If it is in the best interest of University of Oregon to have baseball, it doesn’t have to be at the expense of wrestling.
“Let’s work together to have both.”