“I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona, from my front porch you can see the sea, I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona
And if you buy that, I’ll throw the Golden Gate in free”

By Mike Finn, W.I.N. Editor
Country singer George Strait made these words famous in a song, playing on the old myth that some day the state of California will fall into the Pacific Ocean after an earthquake hits along the San Andreas fault.
Wrestlers and coaches in one of the nation’s biggest wrestling states — in terms of population and high school wrestlers — may at times feel that they’ve already been set adrift from the U.S. mainland in terms of national opportunities to compete; the latest coming last summer when Fresno State announced it was dropping its wrestling program.
For no state has lost more collegiate wrestling programs — 80 — than the state of California, which in turn has 23,318 prep wrestlers. And the majority of those lost programs were members of the California Community College Wrestling Association, which is down to 22 programs this year.
“When I competed in the late 60s and early 70s, there were over 80 community colleges in California,” recalled Bill Kalivas, the long-time Bakersfield College head coach who competed for Pierce College before becoming Cal-State Bakersfield’s first All-American in 1974 and 1975.
Kalivas has seen a lot of changes in the CCC since becoming its head coach in 1986. Unfortunately, many of the changes by the Commission of Athletics (COA), the organizing body of 104 California community colleges, have cut off CCC wrestlers from competing against the rest of the country.
Since the mid-1980s, the CCC’s competitive season takes place in the fall, climaxed by the COA’s state tournament that takes place in December, two months before the nation’s top community college wrestlers compete at the National Junior College Athletic Association national championship.
That means that not only do CCC wrestlers have no chance at winning a national championship, but in many cases these wrestlers are ignored by much of the country.
“We are kind of trapped,” said Kalivas, whose Bakerfield teams have produced 14 COA state champions and two team titles (2003-04). “The difficulty is that we’ve become a stepchild in the sense that high school coaches look down at the time of the year that we compete. College coaches look at our guys and say when we see them in the spring at a freestyle meet, we don’t see enough of your guys; most of them come in and are out of shape and we don’t get a good feel that they are committed.
“Truthfully, our system is its own worst enemy. There are some very qualified coaches, who teach very good skills and technique.”
The decision for the California Community Colleges to compete in one semester had to do with the three-week break during the holidays.
“Coaches were having a difficult time housing their athletes, keeping them at practice, feeding them and keeping control of them when there were no parameters,” said Kalivas.
“I fought against it,” said former Fresno City coach Bill Musick, who now serves as the COA’s state tournament director. “It was a big opinion of coaches competing through a three- to four-week Christmas break that athletes would rather be on break.
“It was a bad thing for California wrestling because there many wrestling coaches who were also football coaches. When they (changed to one semester), it made it impossible to do both and a lot of schools, instead of hiring somebody extra to be a wrestling coach, just dropped wrestling.”
In the past, Lassen Community College has been the lone exception. They also competed in the NJCAA tournament.
But that will change this year.
“Last year, legislation was passed that any member colleges of the COA cannot compete in the COA in some sports and the NJCAA,” said Dave Eadie of the Commission of Athletics. “As of this year, they are competing in the COA.”
So come this February, when the nation’s best junior college wrestlers are selected in Minnesota, there will be another group of JUCO wrestlers watching from afar … on their own.
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