This story has been told before but it is always good to bring it up from time to time for those who are new to the Kansas wrestling community who may not be familiar with the fact that the University of Kansas once had a college wrestling team and that KU dropped the program after the 1966 season according to the article on KU 1932 Olympic Gold Medal winner Pete Mehringer. Read this incredible story on Mehringer. I have read stories on him before but I learned new things about this one time college football player, college wrestler, student college wrestling coach, Olympic wrestling gold medalist, professional football player, professional wrestler, actor and engineer. What a remarkable career and story!

http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/Movies/2008/08/09/6400111.html

I remember as a young high school student in 1966 reading in the Kansas City Staran article about the University of Kansas making the decision to drop their college wrestling program. Wow that was over 45 years ago. Well that dates me. I believe the article stated that the KU Athletic Department decided that there was not enough interest in the program and that it did not compete well against the Oklahoma teams. 45 years ago is a long time ago but that is what I remember about the article.

It really leaves you with a feeling of sadness to think of the Kansas University dropping their program in 1966 and I think Kansas State University dropped their wrestling program around 1973 or 1974. Wow around 40 years without a NCAA Division I college wrestling program. Will we ever have one again? I know the chances of that do not look good but you never know. When we were going thru the potential Big 12 break up over the last two years, I considered the possibility of the Big Ten inviting Kansas University into their conference but requiring it to add college wrestling. That is a possible scenario but not likely to happen now.

About a year ago college wrestling lost a NCAA Division II powerhouse when UNO dropped their wrestling program. It was announced to the team on the very night it just won another national championship. Remember how mad the college wrestling community became. How many times have we seen college wrestling programs dropped, too many times. Too many times we have to then try to salvage the programs but it is almost always too late.

After the UNO decision, a group of us in the Kansas wrestling community decided that we wanted to do something it Kansas before another college wrestling program would be dropped in our state. We worked with the USAW-KS organization to establish the Kansas College Wrestling Fund administered and governed by USAW-KS. We now have a vehicle in place where the members of the Kansas wrestling community can be active in helping to keep college wrestling programs in Kansas.

No one can promise us that we will ever again have a NCAA Division I program in Kansas but we do now have 10 College wrestling programs in Kansas at the junior college, NAIA and NCAA Division II levels. These programs offer a tremendous amount of opportunity for our young Kansas wrestlers. I have shown in other topics how many of our former Kansas Kids and High School wrestlers have signed to wrestle at these Kansas colleges in the last few years.

Join us in this fight by becoming a Donor to the Kansas College Wrestling Fund and working within your local wrestling communities to help this fund grow. Whatever amount ($5, $10, $50, $100, $120, $250, $500, $1,000 or more) will be important. Give whatever you can afford. It will be appreciated and it will help make college wrestling grow in Kansas.

Make checks payable: USA Wrestling – Kansas, Inc./KCWF, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) entity.
Mail to: Mike Juby, Kansas College Wrestling Fund, 7208 Magnolia Way, Hutchinson, KS 67502

Join us in this fight by becoming a Donor to the Kansas College Wrestling Fund and working within your local wrestling communities to help this fund grow. Whatever amount ($5, $10, $50, $100, $120, $250, $500, $1,000 or more) will be important. Give whatever you can afford. It will be appreciated and it will help make college wrestling grow in Kansas.

Make checks payable: USA Wrestling – Kansas, Inc./KCWF, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) entity.
Mail to: Mike Juby, Kansas College Wrestling Fund, 7208 Magnolia Way, Hutchinson, KS 67502
_________________________

Pete is from Kinsley and I met him several times as a kid there as he came back there from time to time to visit some friends of his. He came up to me before a wrestling match, in 1968, against Garden City and wished me luck. I had no idea who he was and in my worst moment I walked away from him without speaking. Someone told me later who he was and I apologized to him. He just shook my hand and laughed and said not to worry about it, the day after the Olympics no one knew who he was either. He was a great man and virtually no one in that town knew him. I always thought that was a shame.

KU's wrestling team must have been on a club basis only. As a former K-State wrestler, we never wrestled against KU in a dual or in the Big 7/ Big 8 Tournaments. K-State dropped their program around 1975 or 1976, thanks to Title IX.

No, I am pretty sure the KU wrestling proram was a regular Division I team. If you wrestled at KSU after 1966 you would not have seen KU at those meets or duals since KU dropped the program in 1966. I am almost positive that the KU wrestling team before 1966 was a regular college wrestling program and not a club team.

Read the story of the KU Olympic gold medal winner linked above and you can see he won the Missouri Valley Conference (predecessor to the modern day Big 12) title and came in second at the National tournament in 1932 the same year that he won the Olympic gold medal. Below is the section that refers to this.



Also The National Wrestling Coaches Association has a comprehensive list of dropped college wrestling programs and the University of Kansas is on the list as a dropped NCAA Division I program along with Kansas State University. Below is a link to that list.

http://www.nwcaonline.com/entrenchment/downloads/ezview_comprehensive.pdf

It wasn't on a club basis. It may have been Missouri Valley for wrestling and Big 6 for Football and the like, but Pete was a runner-up in the NCAAs before he went on to beat the defending Olympic champion in 1932. 1932 is why you never competed with KU.

You need to check the NCAA records. KU did not compete in D-1 wrestling any time after the 1940's.

Okay. Pete Mehringer was the Uncle of very good friends of ours. He competed in the NCAAs in the 1930s, which is what I wrote. My point was that since it was so long ago, you wouldn't have seen any KU v KState matchups. There is a picture of him in the Fieldhouse in Lawrence if you want to read up on him. It is a very cool story.

My response was that KU did not drop their program in 1966 as you stated. It was long before that.

Oh, I see. You were responding to another poster and are confusing that with me. Have a good day.

Not sure when they dropped it but Kinsley had a couple of guys on the last team. Dwight Werner and another kid wrestled for them about, maybe 1966 ot 67, and I think that was about the last years of it. If I am not mistaken Dwight wrestled on the last year of the program about that time. Long time ago though and sometimes I have trouble remembering yesterday so who knows, but I think that is about right.

I bet there are a lot of guys reading this that would remember though maybe one of them will chimb in. They were an intercollegiate sport up to that time though. I am curious about it and will email Duane Werner and see if he remembers.

I still think you are incorrect. I believe they did drop their program around 1966. This is directly from the article that was linked in my first post. Also I believe I saw evidence of this about five years ago when we were talking about Division I programs on this forum.

Vince I think you are right. I got a message in to Duane about it. He will know, because I am certain his brother Dwight wrestled on that last team.

Coach Westphal,

Thank you. I think I am correct too. Here is another article about Mehringer
from the kuhistory.com website that states in the article that the KU program was dropped in 1966.

http://www.kuhistory.com/proto/story.asp?id=28

Well I was wrong about Dwight though. His sister Judy just told me he did not, so I must be thinking of someone else, maybe Tommy Elmore. Anyway one of those guys did. I remember when they dropped it and it was when I was an eight grader or a freshman in high school so that would have been about 66 or so. Boy that is getting to be a far piece from here isn't it? I know one thing as sure as I am sitting here though, those basketball folk at KU will never allow wrestling back there again. I would be more surprised with that than eternal peace in the Middle East.

Coach Westphal,

I really enjoyed your earlier post on when you met Mehringer before your wrestling match. It is fun to think back to that mid 60's time period. You and I definitely have dated ourselves today!

I agree with you that the basketball crowd has no interest in bringing wrestling back to the University of Kansas. Like I said earlier I think the only chance of that would be if due to future conference instability that they left for the Big 10 and the Big 10 made them field a wrestling team. That is a very unlikely possibility though.

Good luck with the Metro Classic this year, Coach.

All of you must be thinking of when Gary Duff coached their club in an attempt to start a program at KU. It was a club and not affiliated with the Athletic Department.

After your post above I wanted to get more proof than the two articles and the NWCA dropped wrestling program list. I contacted the KU Memorial Union Director of Public Affairs by e-mail asking if he could help. It turns out we were both correct. Here is part of his reply.



So as you can see we were both correct in a sense. There was NCAA wrestling at KU early but it was dropped in 1934. NCAA wrestling at KU was not added again for thirty years in 1964. It was only an active program in the 60's for about three years because as both Mehringer articles state it was dropped again in 1967. So if you wrestled at KSU in that 30 year period before 1964 or after 1967 you are correct that KU did not have an active NCAA program in those years.

I wish I could get the attachment from 1964 on this post because it is a neat article from that time period with pictures but it is a .jpg file that I cannot get to copy on this post. Oh the attachement says Terry Shockley was the KU wrestling coach in 1964 when the program was resurrected.

Thanks for your input

Thanks Vince, and we have been following Jacob and some of the other kids that wrestled that year, glad to see they are doing well. Come and see us at the meet. I will be doing the TV so I won't get around much. They said they need a face made for radio and I am always that guy.

See you all at the Metro, should be a good one.

I was curious about the KU deal. I know they did at some point, have a program because there was a Kinsley kid on that team when they cut it. I emailed some guys back home and they thought it was Tommy Elmore and that could have been. The Werner's said it was not Dwight. He and Duane both wrestled at Fort Hays State. Your memory plays tricks on you though and I could not remember. Shame on them for every dropping it and for what they did to Pete back in the day though. They almost went out of their way to keep him from being successful in those days. K-State did the same thing to Jackson that last year too. Bad enough that they dropped it, they tried to handcuff the good kids they had left at the end. That's basketball guys for you and they all end up being administrators. hahah Now that I am retired I can say that outloud.

A quick Pete story. I went with my son, to a KU-OSU baseball game two or three years ago. I noticed, as we toured the Allen Field House museum that Pete was not in their HOF. I complained about that and the currator told me he did not know who he was nor had he ever heard of him. I was standing by his picture. I told him that he was an embarrassment and that I bet I could grab a random OSU fan and that they would have heard of him. He told me he doubted that. I grabbed a guy in an OSU shirt and asked, "you ever heard of Pete Mehringer" and he said, "hell yes, he was an Olympic Champ and he is in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame". The KU guy just waived me off and walked away. That sort of says it all about them, and I am an alum. I was embarrassed for them, and the OSU guys laughed at them.

Coach,

That is an amazing story about that KU curator and the random OSU fan. It says so much about on how wrestling is treasured at OSU that a random fan from that school would know KU's only wrestling gold medal winner. It also says a lot about the status of wrestling at KU that a curator has never heard of Peter Mehringer KU wrestling Olympic gold medal winner.

Thanks for sharing it and your other story on our Kansas 1932 Olympic Wrestling Gold Medal winner. You wonder how many more there could have been over the years if KU or KSU had kept their programs.

Also thanks for remembering Jacob and for the opportunity that you have given him and others at the Annual Metro Classic over the years.