FOR MIND & BODY
"Smart" wrestlers succeed on mat & classroom
— Ben Franklin
By Mike Finn, W.I.N. Editor
The man who signed his name to the Declaration of Independence also penned these words, which are literally etched into a wall of the 100-year-old Weightman Hall that sits on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, which Franklin founded in 1755.
Ol’ Ben would have been thrilled with the outcome of last year’s NCAA Championships in St. Louis, where three of the individual titles were claimed by wrestlers from "academic" schools: Jesse Jantzen (149 pounds) of Harvard, Matt Gentry (157) of Stanford and Troy Letters (165) of Lehigh.
And while Franklin listed wrestling among the sports that made up the first student-athletes, turning those efforts into championships became a rarity at schools like Penn that annually rank among the top academic universities in the country.
Jantzen’s championship was just the second for Harvard, ranked the No. 1 university in the country by U.S. News & World Report. Gentry, meanwhile, became the first wrestler from Stanford, ranked No. 5, to reach the top step of the medal stand.
Stanford coach Steve Buddie, who earned one of Stanford’s 11 all-time All-American honors when he wrestled for the Cardinal — finishing fourth at 167 pounds in 1990 — remembers when wrestlers at Stanford focused almost exclusively on their academic demands.
"There was a feeling that the admission standards were so high and we don’t have that many scholarships so what’s the point" Let’s bring in wrestlers and we’ll be happy to teach them as much as we can," recalled Buddie, now in his fourth year as Stanford’s head coach. "My attitude now is (academic and athletic success) aren’t mutually exclusive anymore."
Buddie can’t remember a time when he’s recruited "so many gifted" wrestlers.
"I’d say about five of the top ten recruits in the country have shown interest in us,"
said Buddie, who also said he’s seen a different attitude among his wrestlers since Gentry’s NCAA success last March.
"I had more guys ready to go to freestyle events in the spring than ever before," Buddie said. "I think we had guys who always wanted to do that. They just needed that little push. Coaches could push as much as they wanted, but it took something like (Gentry’s championship) to get it to click."
Pennsylvania coach Roger Reina may have found the same attitude in 1986 when he took over the one of the oldest wrestling programs in the country — the Quakers fielded its first team in 1893 — but had not had an All-American since 1964 and an NCAA champion since 1942 (Richard DiBatista, Penn’s only NCAA champ at that time, won his second straight title that year).
The attitude about Penn wrestling was so bad that in 1980 — Reina’s first year as a student-athlete — the athletic department announced the wrestling program would be phased out in four years. But by the time Reina finished his career in 1984, the Penn alumni and community fought back to revitalize the Quaker pr
ogram.Now 20 years later, Reina sees a similar attitude in the wrestlers he recruits.
"The nature of the people who we recruit are very self-motivated, very self-disciplined both in sport and school," Reina said. "By the time we’re recruiting them, they’ve already proven
| Stanford coach Steve Buddie appeared just as happy as Matt Gentry after the Cardinal wrestler won his school's first NCAA championship last March. |
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