By Mike Finn

Not even Jim Giunta, the executive director of the National Collegiate Wrestling Association, knows how to describe the teams that compete in the NCWA.

            “We’re trying to figure out how to fit this round peg in a square hole because everyone wants to categorize us somewhere,” said Giunta. “We are a unique duck.”

            And if the NCWA is some type of bird, it is soaring since Giunta helped turned the organization from a handful of true club teams to many squads that are nearly on equal par to some NCAA programs.

            “If you did call this a club organization then we would be the only club sport on the college level that competes against NCAA competition,” Giunta said. “More than half of our competition is against other NCAA divisions. We changed to calling them programs because truthfully we have some schools, where they have major college football like Georgia or Alabama and don’t want people to know that they have wrestling team.”

            Giunta was referring to the Title IX question that helped kill wrestling in many parts of the country, particularly the south, which makes up many of the 154 programs and 2000 wrestlers who will vie for a NCWA  national championship, March 11-13, in Hampton, Va.

            Giunta pointed out that at least 19 of the wrestling teams within the NCWA are part of their school’s athletic department and that Mercer University in Georgia offers as much as $138,000 in financial aid while Marion Military Academy in Alabama provides scholarships for at least 20 wrestlers.

            “We are trying to get away from having squads that might only have a few wrestlers and then would fade way,” said Giunta, whose home office is in Dallas, Texas. “We like programs to have a minimum of 14 wrestlers. With that many wrestlers, it will still survive if one of the leaders leaves.”

            As the NCWA continues to grow, so too does the diversity of the wrestlers, who are not just attending a college to wrestler.

            “We have a lot of kids who are highly academic,” Giunta said. “Our academic standards require a 2.0 and many of the schools require their kids to have a 2.5 in order to compete. Many of the wrestlers are at the schools for academics first.”

            At Mercer, there is an 184-pound wrestler Jerod Northcott, who is ranked tenth nationally at his weight.  He also is a biomedical engineer, who has a 3.7 GPA and  is part of a group of students working on fitting the prosthetic universal socket for amputees. He will be going  as part of a mission to Vietnam to fit amputees with these prosthetics that the students and professor have designed that are also to produce low cost. 

            Meanwhile at the University of Toledo, there is Tom Kiefer, the  acting president of its organization and is undefeated at 174 pounds. As acting president, he is in charge of our scheduling, meet organization while maintaining a reputable GPA in mechanical engineering and technology at the university.

            Outside of wrestling he plays guitar with some blues bands in the Cleveland area and is a member of the UT Ballroom dancing club.

            Then there is David Barringer , who wrestles for University of Texas - Arlington at 157 pounds. He also competed in MMA and owns a 5-1 record.

            The NCWA is divided into seven different geographic conferences over 38 states and there are conference tournaments to determine who qualifies for the nationals.  The number of automatic qualifiers for the national tournament is determined proportionally.

            Before these wrestlers meet in Virginia to determine the best in NCWA, Giunta and his group continue to find ways in making the NCWA more interesting.

            On January 16, the best of the NCWA will take on the best of the NAIA in the All-Star Challenge that will be held during the Long Star Duals in Grand Prairie, Texas. Then two weeks later, 24 NCWA teams will meet in Murfreesboro, Tenn., for the NCWA National Duals.

            “It’s just the beginning,” said Giunta. “There is a lot more we can do.”

            At a time when college wrestling is considered in jeopardy, the NCWA looks positively in the future. n