State Of The Sport -- Wrestlers All Suited Up With Nowhere To Go
Paul Jackson, Dick Wooding and Ron Johnson were on hand for the lean years - the beginnings of greatness, they like to call it. All three were co-captains of the University of Washington wrestling team in the early 1960s.
That team became a thing of pride on campus. As the decade turned, Washington became the standard of the Pac-8 Conference and finished among the top 10 in the NCAA tournament several times. The Amateur Wrestling News rated Washington among the 20 best college programs of the '70s. The minor sport of the '60s became a major sport.
By 1980, however, wrestling at Washington was no more, the victim of an ignoble death. All that is left are a few dusty files in the athletic department. Not much of a legacy for a father to leave a son.
Jackson, Wooding and Johnson each had a son who became a state champion in high school. Jay Jackson won a state title at Mercer Island, where his father has been the wrestling coach since 1970. Mike Wooding won his state title at Sumner High; and Lance Johnson won his at West Linn in Oregon.
After finishing their careers at Washington, the three co-captains remained close, occasionally sharing family picnics. As they watched their boys play, the fathers fancied a day they could watch their sons wrestle for the alma mater.
Today, Jay and Lance wrestle at Stanford University, Mike at Highline Community College.
``I haven't even seen my kid wrestle (in college) yet,'' Paul Jackson said. ``I don't even have a choice. That's what concerns me. If you're an in-state kid, you don't have a choice.''
Jackson and his teammates probably never imagined what is true today. There are no in-state Division I wrestling programs in Washington.
Once, both Washington and Washington State carried teams, as did Pacific Lutheran, Puget Sound, Western Washington, Central Washington, Eastern Washington, Whitman, Whitworth and more than a dozen junior colleges.
Now, only Pacific Lutheran and Central Washington - both NAIA schools - have wrestling programs.
Washington's golden age was forged by Jim Smith, who coached the Huskies to two conference championships and a fourth-place finish in the 1972 NCAA tournament. Smith took over in 1967, and in 1969 his team finished 13th at the NCAAs, the school's best finish to that time. Washington finished seventh in the nation in 1970, eighth in '71 and seventh in '73. Smith resigned midway through the 1974 season, before his team went on to finish sixth.
The Smith era also produced Washington's only national wrestling champions - Bill Murdock ('72) and Larry Owings ('70), the only man to beat Iowa State's legendary Dan Gable.
In addition to the four-year programs at PLU and Central, four community colleges - Big Bend, Yakima Valley, Lower Columbia and Highline - have teams. Most of the community colleges followed Washington's lead.
``There are enough quality wrestlers here to produce a very strong Division I program, with just Washington wrestlers,'' said Chris Wolfe, PLU's wrestling coach. ``Our best wrestlers are being taken away from their families.''
Among Pac-10 schools, Oregon and Oregon State carry the most Washington wrestlers - five each.
``The sad thing is we're ranked 10th in the nation in the number of high-school athletes that participate in wrestling,'' said Mike Hess, president of the Washington State Wrestling Coaches Association and coach at Edmonds-Woodway High. ``Wrestling is exceedingly strong in this state. The other sad thing is the drain of future brains and talent.''
Some area wrestlers have moved as far away as Michigan, Notre Dame and Oklahoma State, as the rest of the Pac-10 has cut wrestling programs. Six schools in the conference do not have teams. Washington State and UCLA dropped theirs soon after Washington's ax fell.
``I'm positive it was a domino effect,'' said Darren Sipe, Washington's last wrestling coach. He now is the first-year coach at Bellevue's Newport High.
Revenue was one of several factors that contributed to the demise of UW wrestling.
In the fall of 1974, half of the Husky wrestling team was seriously injured when one of two vans transporting the team to Canada was struck head-on by a drunken driver near Mount Vernon. Most of the wrestlers in the van never wrestled again. Some dropped out of school.
``There were kids all over the freeway,'' said Sipe, then an assistant coach. ``That really hurt us, to lose half the squad like that. Our depth was gone for the next several years.''
The accident probably accelerated the wrestling program's end. Scholarships were being eliminated, making it hard for the Huskies to compete successfully. By 1980, inflation was riding a crest and Title IX was imminent.
Title IX, legislation intended to ensure colleges carry equal numbers of men's and women's sports, arrived as women's basketball was on an upswing. Washington lost two low-revenue men's sports in 1980, wrestling and gymnastics. Sensing the end, Sipe resigned just before wrestling was axed.
``It was a systematic dismantling of a great program,'' Dick Wooding said. ``The real tragedy is Paul (Jackson) has a son who's a 4.0 (straight-A) student, and he has to go out of state to compete.''
How does Washington justify cutting wrestling?
``We needed to put more funds into the women's programs, to be more in compliance with Title IX,'' said Mike Lude, who stepped down as Washington's athletic director Jan. 15 after nearly 15 years. ``There were few institutions that were wrestling, so we had to travel far and wide to compete. We decided to at least suspend, not cancel, both wrestling and gymnastics. Whether it comes back or not depends on somebody else right now.''
Washington recently added two women's sports, soccer and fastpitch softball. There now are 11 women's sports and nine men's sports.
Two years ago, Wooding, Jackson and others who supported reinstating UW wrestling, met with Lude and produced a financial commitment of $80,000 for one season of wrestling.
``He (Lude) said, `That sounds good for this year, boys, but how about next year?' '' Wooding said. ``He wanted to see a million dollars. I've been going to the football games for 25 years, donating money to the athletic program with the idea that I'm supporting all the teams.''
Jay Jackson has a 12-12 record as Stanford's only freshman wrestler. His father plans to see his son wrestle in the Pac-10 meet. Jay said he misses Seattle but is happy at Stanford.
``It definitely would have made my choice tougher (if Washington had a wrestling team),'' he said. ``It would have been nice, I'm sure. I know my dad's pretty livid about it, because they stopped the program when it was a Top 10 program.
``Whenever we wrestle Oregon and OSU, I see a lot of friends from Washington. When I went to the Las Vegas tournament, I saw a lot of friends there, too. It seems like everywhere, I've seen Washington kids.''
Except Washington.
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UW'S GOLDEN AGE OF WRESTLING
-- The history of the UW wrestling program under Jim Smith: ;
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YEAR RECORD PAC-8 FINISH NCAA FINISH Individual titles ;
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1967 4-10-1 4th N/A 1 Pac-8, 0 NCAA ;
1968 13-5 3rd 38th 2 Pac-8, 0 NCAA ;
1969 9-6 2nd 13th 1 Pac-8, 0 NCAA ;
1970 16-3-1 2nd 7th 3 Pac-8, 1 NCAA # ;
1971 12-3 1st 8th 3 Pac-8, 0 NCAA # ;
1972 16-3 1st 4th 3 Pac-8, 1 NCAA # ;
1973 13-2 2nd 7th 2 Pac-8, 0 NCAA # ;
1974 10-3 1st 6th 4 Pac-8, 0 NCAA # ;
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# also placed at least one wrestler second or third at NCAA.
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Note: Washington finished fourth in the conference in '75 and '76 (21st and 17th in the nation), third in '77, second in '78 and sixth in '79. Wrestling started at Washington in 1910, with interruptions from 1927-1931 and 1942-1956.