The wrestling community worldwide received a shock last month. In order to make room for a new event, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that wrestling was included on the list of seven events that could be facing possible elimination from the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.
Members of Delaware's wrestling community discuss the possibility of being dropped by the Olympics.
Members of Delaware's wrestling community discuss the possibility of being dropped by the Olympics.
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Jack Holloway, former Executive Director of the Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association and a long-time high school wrestling coach, was among those taken aback.
“I think everybody in the wrestling community is disappointed and everybody else was completely blindsided. They had no idea this was coming," said Holloway.
Holloway, now the athletic director at Tower Hill School and former head coach for Tower Hill and William Penn high school wrestling programs, admits he’s struggling to see the rationale behind the decision.
"We have a case [where wrestling was] in the original Olympic games the Ancient Olympic games, one of the very first sports," he said. "[Today], I know that over 200 countries have wrestling. And a wide diversity of those countries have won medals. It’s not dominated by one or two countries like gymnastics is dominated by the USA and China "
"Any sport with this type of tradition is weird to see people trying to remove it. That’s like taking the [Pro Football] Hall of Fame out of Canton, [Ohio]," Hollloway added.
Head coach of Division I state team champion Smyrna High School Kurt Howell was especially bothered by the announcement.
"It’s just disappointing that the Olympic Committee would feel that sports like synchronized swimming and ping pong are more competitive and offer the greatest challenges for amateur athletes than wrestling," said Howell, who coached five of his Smyrna wrestlers to titles at last weekend's state individual high school wrestling championship meet.
"I’m biased, but I feel like wrestling is the most pure of any sport. It’s not corrupted by politics; it’s not corrupted by professionalism. Whereas they’re adding golf and the golf pros are going to have to take two weeks out of their career where they’re making millions of dollars to go try to win a medal that’s meaningless to them. The same thing is true for hockey and basketball."
Over the past 20 years, wrestling programs across the country have been decimated by Title IX compliance regulations and lack of television audience.
Since 1972, 281 colleges and universities have discontinued their wrestling programs. Delaware State University in Dover dropped their program following the 2009-2010 academic year, while the University of Delaware cut their team in the early 1990's. Both schools cited Title IX as a concern.
But Mike Moyer, Executive Director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association (NWCA) believes the sport is weathering that storm. He noted that until fifteen years ago, youth wrestling programs across the country saw huge losses in participation.
"Up until 1999, youth wrestling saw a drop of over 130,000 participants," said Moyer. "Since then, we've seen a rise of over 40,000 participants and 95 new programs around the country."
At the collegiate level, Moyer notes the cuts have slowed. According to the NWCA, only nine Division I programs have been dropped since 2002, leaving 77. The NWCA also notes there is a net gain of 49 wrestling programs across all college levels over the past 13 years.
Still, the majority of the wrestling community expects it will take a very aggressive mobilization to ensure that the sport is not erased from the Olympic roster.
"[Olympic wrestling] needs the whole world. Not just America,” said Holloway. “This is going to take a worldwide effort. Japan, Russia, Iran, China - that’s where it’s going to come from. Our local fans can send letters but I don’t know locally what you can do to generate to much of an effect."
"The person that’s not a wrestling fanatic should know and understand that this is the Olympic sport," said Howell, who was a four-time state champ at Newark High and college all-American at Clemson. "If the Olympics doesn’t have wrestling, what does it have? They need to know that the Olympics are the epitome of the amateur sports and if wrestling’s not in it, it doesn’t represent amateur sports."