Kyle Bounds is officially listed at 5-foot-9 and 157 pounds, but he appears to be much bigger. His stocky frame is muscular, and his biceps bulge out of his T-shirt. It isn’t his muscles that define him, however.
A glance at his head gives the real clues about who he is. Both of his ears are scarred and show signs of cauliflower ear. To an uninformed person they might take this as unfortunate problem, but to a wrestling fan, they know it comes with the territory.
Bounds is a former three-time Washington state champion in wrestling, and a four-time finalist. He lost in the championship match his junior year, something he can smile about now.
“Yeah, that sucks, right?” He says. “It was good for me though. A learning experience.”
Bounds was such a proficient wrestler that schools recruited him to wrestle in college, something only a small percentage of people can boast about. And of all the schools he was recruited by, he chose the University of Oregon. They’d never had great success in wrestling, but the Ducks had a proud tradition for over half a century. With the added benefit of wrestling at a high level close to home, Bounds made his decision with visions of one day wrestling for a national title.
Then the news broke on July 13, 2007, that the University was cutting wrestling in favor of baseball and women’s competitive cheer.
“I felt as if a rug had been pulled out from under me,” Bounds says. “All of a sudden, thoughts of what I was going to do for the next few years of college were running through my head.”
The announcement effectively made the 2007-2008 wrestling season the last one for the program, and with the impending doom, some wrestlers decided to quit instead of finish out the year. But Bounds says this was a good thing, as it made the team really close.
“The people who stayed were the ones who really cared about wanting to save the program. We didn’t have as many people, but the team was by far the closest team I’ve ever been on,” he said.
Now, Bounds is transferring to compete at Michigan State, where he’ll finish his college career as a Spartan.
Heavyweight Charlie Alexander, who also transferred earlier in the spring, agrees with Bounds, saying that although the season was hard knowing everyone was leaving, the guys on the team rallied around trying to save the program.
“It was kind of surreal, knowing we were done at the end of the year,” he said. “We didn’t really talk about it verbally, and instead we focused on getting the word out about our situation.”
Alexander, who was a four-time state champion at Crater High School in Oregon, was one of two Ducks to qualify for the NCAA Championships, the other being junior Ryan Dunn.
“Though, at one point the buzz around our season did get distracting,” Alexander admits.
“A lot of the questions I was answering dealt with the decision to cut the program instead of the actual matches, and having to balance school, wrestling and fundraising for the program was tough.”
The fundraising he talks about came in many forms. The Web site www.saveoregonwrestling.com was created and updated with new news about legal happenings as well as ways to donate money. One could write a check to the cause or get sponsored to lose weight and donate the money to the program.
Then there was the bus. Some students may not have realized the significance of the wrestling team rolling around campus in a tie-dye-colored bus, yelling through a megaphone and ringing absurdly loud bells, but a lot of people did. The bus belonged to the son of the late Ken Kesey, one of the University of Oregon’s most famous alumni.
Kesey is famous for his books “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Sometimes a Great Notion.” He is equally famous for his exploits with the Merry Pranksters and their cross-country trip in the bus they nicknamed “Furthur.” But a lesser-known fact is that Kesey wrestled at the University of Oregon, along with his two sons – Jed and Zane.
Jed, the eldest son, was killed in a van accident in 1984 when he was on a trip with the Oregon wrestling team on the way to a meet. Kesey died in November of 2001, and since then Zane has continued to support the University’s wrestling program. He came to the rescue of the program in February of this year, allowing the team to ride down 15th street and University in the bus while fans milled around outside McArthur Court before a home basketball game against the Washington State Cougars.
The team sported “What would Kesey do?” T-shirts and passed out flyers, but to many the gesture was futile.
“We pretty much got an answer of ‘No, no matter what you guys do’ from the athletic department,” Bounds says.
Even with raising over three million dollars and getting contractors to say they would build the team a workout facility at no cost.
With the realization that they wouldn’t be able to wrestle at the University next season, members of the team quietly made plans for their remaining years of eligibility.
Dunn, who wrestled well at the NCAA championships, decided to quit because of school. He’s going into his senior season and transferring would have rendered him ineligible because of not having enough credits at his new school.
In fact, the only two members of the 2007-2008 team who will be wrestling next year are Bounds and Alexander. Alexander got an offer to wrestle for Western State College of Colorado in Gunnison, Colo. There he will be a redshirt sophomore and look to build on his success of his trip to the NCAAs last year.
And Bounds? He leaves for Michigan State on August 14. A few weeks after the season ended, he started looking into schools that would take him. He said that a few schools in the Pac-10, including Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Bakersfield, were interested, but after the news that Arizona State intended to drop its wrestling team Bounds felt a change of conference was necessary.
“I felt the trend in the Pac-10 was upsetting and I needed to get out of it. I didn’t want to finish out my last two years somewhere else then have my alma mater drop wrestling. I wanted to go somewhere where wrestling had a strong tradition.”
The Big Ten conference is a good place to find that. He was offered a spot at Michigan State, a chance he eagerly jumped on because of the popularity of wrestling.
“In the Big Ten by-laws, it says that a member of the conference has to offer wrestling. That sort of dedication to the sport is something I’m really excited about being a part of,” he said.
In the end one finds that you can take the sport from the wrestler, but you can’t take the wrestler from the sport. It’s become ingrained in athletes like Alexander and Bounds, who have been wrestling since they were seven years old. Both athletes were set on wrestling somewhere next year, because the thought of not wrestling was so painful.
“Realistically, I’m done after college,” Bounds says. “There aren’t many opportunities to continue on in this sport after college, and the thought of living life wondering what I could have done with my last two years of eligibility was just too much for me to handle. I haven’t completed my personal goals by far.”
Those goals include becoming an All-American and eventually a national champion. Bounds said it with so much conviction that it left little doubt that he will do special things at Michigan State. The good always overcome adversity, and to Kyle Bounds, he wants to be more than good- he wants to be a champion.
“Everyone wants to be the best, and that’s including me.”
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