Add Women's Wrestling at KU

I urge you to look at the topic KU It Is Time To Add Wrestling on either the Kids forum or the College Forum. I think this is an opportunity to possibly to convince KU to add both Men and Women wrestling programs. Hopefully you will join in the effort and contact KU to add both men and women wrestling programs.

Thanks Vince we will work on this with you. Also thanks for your email recently. We read it but have been in a bit of a family emergency mode and haven't responded officially, but Coach Ed is already working on some of your ideas. Hope to talk to you soon and get some things going up there too.

Ms. Jenni

Jenni

Yes, Let me know how you and Coach Ed are planning to start in your area and if there is anything I can do here to coordinate with what you are doing. If we can just get it to start at a couple of high schools that could get it rolling.

That is exactly what he has been talking to coaches about and we have permission to start a Girls "JV" league next season and we will get other schools to do the same and then we will wrestle them during varsity duals and hopefully expand to tourneys. We will keep you posted.

Ms. Jenni

That is great. Congratulations on starting that. I think that makes good sense to have the girls wrestle during the varsity duals.

You probably know this but the number of high school girl participants over the last few years is growing. It is still very low compared to the boys but the boys numbers seem to be pretty stable while the girls numbers are growing. According to the National Federation Of State High
School Associations the girls participation numbers in recent years is as follows:

99-00 2,474
00-01 3,032
01-02 3,405
02-03 3,769
03-04 4,008

I got a feeling that you and Coach Ed are going to add significantly to this growth in the next few years.

By the way I went to the KU relays yesterday and I talked to a young man at the entrance desk at Robinson Gymnasium. I asked him if he knew where the KU wrestling club worked out. He told me that he was on the team. I told him I was there to see if a KU NCAA team would be able to wrestle at Robinson or where the current KU club wrestled. He told me that they could wrestle at either but that it won't happen because of Title IX. I told him my solution would be for them to add a women's wrestling team. He kind of gave me a Yeah Right smile. I told him that there were a few colleges that did already have women's wrestling teams and he seemed surprised to hear that. But he went on to say that we should get them to add a women's gymnastic team to complement a potential KU NCAA wrestling team for Title IX. He is a nice young man but we still have a lot of attitudes to change about women's wrestling. I think with time it will happen though.

I have already heard from Danielle Hobeika who has offered to help with this. She is in Vegas this week wrestling at Nationals but she will be great to assist and others will be appreciated.

Kansas University officially announced its $26.67 million deal for 8 years with adidas yesterday according to the Kansas City Star. With the new $40.2 million deal with ESPN that means about $67 million in revenue over the next eight years for its athletic department. I figured that it is going to mean about an extra $7 million a year over what their old contracts were. I was told by a Big 12 AD in an e-mail yesterday that a Big 12 wrestling program runs about $600,000 a year in expenses so this would be under 10% of its NEW MONEY coming in!!

We need to petition the KU AD and Chancellor ASAP or today if possible to add men AND women wrestling NCAA programs at KU. After them you might also consider contacting your state representatives in Topeka, maybe even the governor and Phil Kline our ex-wrestler attorney general. The thing is do something today or ASAP. The forces to stop this will be great, but we are wrestlers and wrestling families and they don't know how tough we can be. Contact others to do the same. Congratulate them on their new contracts but let them know you expect them to use a portion of it to add College Wrestling.

PLEASE do not drop this from this forum just because this topic is on other forums. We need to reach everyone NOW!

This would be perfect for me i plan on attending KU next year and am currently participating in women's freestyle wrestling. If there is anything i could or anybody i could talk to let me know, i would be more than happy to get help get this program started. Email me at Yazzyland@sbcglobal.net

Besides the letters that you may be sending to the KU Chancellor, Athletic Director, legislators, Attorney General Kline, Other wrestling athletic directors, coaches, and former college or Olympic wrestlers for assistance in petitioning KU, we also need to mobilize somehow our other Kansas wrestling family members. I believe that Mike Furches was the one who pointed out that the overwhelming majority of them are probably off the forum and not paying attention. I am sure that is correct. We need to reach them as quickly as possible and tell them that they too need to send petition letters for the addition of men and women's wrestling at KU.

I think maybe what we should do is first contact the high school wrestling coaches to do that. They still have their wrestlers in school so they can get to them easier during the school day. Again I would suggest a petition letter to both the Chancellor and the KU Athletic Director from the team. In addition I also think the coach should suggest to the kids to write their own individual letters of petition to both the Chancellor and the KU Athletic Director. The high school wrestlers could ask their parents to do the same. The team and individual letters should be personalized so we will be giving them a variety of thoughts and personal appeals.

After that then I would concentrate on contacting Kids Clubs Directors and suggest to them to either get their kids to together to sign team petition letters (I think this will be difficult to do since the Kids are no longer in wrestling season) or to contact the wrestling families of their team and suggest for them to write individual letters.

So rally up into action first the high schools and then the Kids clubs. I think this is important to do because a few weeks ago when I wrote Larry Keating the Senior Associate KU Athletic Director about adding wrestling at KU, one of the things he mentioned in his reply was that there was just not enough interest. If they do not receive many petition letters or e-mails from us then that will confirm to them that there is not enough interest.

Mike Furches and Sean McCarthy, we need to get our group started. Mike Juby has given me an enthusiastic go ahead and offered help from the USAW Kansas if we need it. He has already started that by sending word out to all the Officers and Directors of our intention and desire to organize a group. I have already received an offer from one of the Officers to do that. So we need to set up an initial meeting. Mike, it might be best to have it in the KC area but I am open on this. I am sure Sean would be willing to travel for the meeting too. For that matter if the initial meeting is smaller less than 15-20 people, we could have it at my house in Overland Park on a Saturday or Sunday. Mike and Sean you two need to get in touch with me to tell me what is best for you on an initial meeting. If anyone else really wants to be part of this committee from the start let me know. Thanks, Vince

Count me in!

Has anyone received any feedback from KU officials regarding the addition of Olympic sports such as wrestling? Who do we need to win over and who (if anyone) at KU is receptive to the idea of adding wrestling? I really like the enthusiasm that people on this forum have for this project but we need to understand who it is that we are lobbying. Is it KU Athletic Department staff or the Kansas Board of Regents that we need to contact?

Thanks go out to everyone willing to organize this effort. Good Luck!

Check the topic KU it is time to add wrestling on the college and high school forums. It has some good links about who to e-mail and some good information about what people are doing. If you want to get more involved personally, contact huskerfan, Vince Nowak, through the forum. It sure would be great to get this accomplished!

Randy,

I got you down on a list I am starting on who to contact about the initial meeting. Right now, I like an idea Mike Furches suggested to me about the initial meeting being held at Lawrence so that we could maybe have some contact with current members of the KU Wrestling Club and also have some easy access to the campus buildings in case we wanted to look at potential practice facilities. If that was the place, it might be good to get access to a room at Lawrence High School since it is so close to campus. Maybe their wrestling coach could help with that.

Mike also suggested the weekend of May 13 and 14th to go along with the Kendall Cross Clinic that will be held at Bishop Ward High School on those dates. That sounded good to me too. Maybe we could meet after the clinic on Saturday which ends at noon either at my house or we could all meet at Lawrence that afternoon. I will get back with you with final plans.

Jeff Mercer, I don't know exactly yet who we need to win over at KU. That will probably be the role of the committee to determine. Lew Perkins, the Chancellor, some group, or combination, I really don't know? We need to find out. A couple of the people who have volunteered have been involved in this in previous years and might be able to provide some insight. I wish we didn't have to go thru all this and they just could see the wisdom of our cause but realistically it is going to take some work.

Thanks, KCWrestlersMom, I would love to see this happen in time for this to be a choice for your son's future wrestling in two years.

By the way, I hope one of you wrestling veterans with the knowledge and experience will take the chairman role. I intend to be a worker once we get this going and I want to be a worker on it until we have successful programs running at KU, KSU and Wichita State and give whatever help we can to promoting the smaller Kansas colleges that already have programs. Heck I would like to eventually see a junior college program at Johnson County Community College here in Overland Park and at Kansas City Kansas Community College too.

Just fyi, Johnson County CC once upon a time, did have a program!

Also on that topic, does anyone have a contact number for Larry Rechtfertig, JOCO former coach?

Everyone who has been posting on this topic and has expressed an interest in getting involved in the effort, please read Sean McCarthy's announcement of our first group meeting. The details can be found in the Breaking News Section of the Home Page.

Also if you are already in the process of writing petition letters to the various parties listed, please mail the letters as Sean suggests and send Sean a copy at the address provided. Yesterday I read this advice on writing a Congressman on themat.com and I think it would be applicable for the Chancellor or Athletic Department too. This advide is from Lawrence Rudner, Director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation:

"Your letter should go to your Senator or Representative and should be no longer than one page: two brief paragraphs are best. Identify yourself, your affiliation, and your major concern in the first paragraph. You should describe why the concern is important and worthwhile in the second paragraph. End with your postal address. Keep it concise!"

If Kansas Newman does actually add a women's wrestling program, that might give a school like KU, KSU or Wichita State a little more incentive to also add a women's program. This would give KU or KSU another local school besides Missouri Valley to compete against. I wonder if Fort Hays State has ever considered a women's wrestling program?

If KU, KSU or WSU adds a Women's program, will they be the only school with a D1 program? This question was posed at our last meeting. If no other D1 has women's wrestling ... that poses a whole different set of questions!

Randy:

I do not believe that there are enough women collegiate teams that they even have NCAA Division teams for it at this point. I think Jeff Mercer wrote in a post that it has not developed enough for that yet. So I believe they wrestle against each other no matter what traditional NCAA or NAIA division the school is in for most sports. I think Pacific has a women's team and they might be Division I in other sports.

Now this might cause problems for Title IX considerations for adding a Men's team. For Title IX does the women sport have to be in the same NCAA Division? Basically I just think it is great to see Women's teams being added to colleges whether they add a mens team or not. I definitely would like to see a men's team also added but it can only help wrestling overall for women's wrestling to grow in popularity. College growth will stimulate high school growth for women wrestling. High school women programs will stimulate youth wrestling growth for girls. All that would help create more wrestling people and interest in our sport. This helps everyone in the long run.

Look for Newman to get serious about wrestling, and the fans to start coming out even more so. Go Newman!

Newman University adding a women's wrestling program is a big plus for Kansas - but how great would it be to have other colleges and universities in Kansas add their own teams? If other schools in Kansas follow the lead from Newman it would put our state at the forefront of the women's wrestling movement. Travel expenses would be less and the competition from such in-state rivalries would be intense. Too often we depend on the folks back east or out west to take the lead. In wrestling we have a situation where the Midwest has a chance to lead the nation. Why can't Kansas be the hot bed for amateur wrestling? We produce solid wrestlers; we might as well develop opportunities for them to compete closer to home. Let's congratulate Newman for adding this wrestling program but let's not allow ourselves to become satisfied. Let's keep the pressure on to add more wrestling programs - for both men and women - in Kansas. And why we are working to add more wrestling programs, let's remember to support the ones we have! We still have work to do.

I know it might seem like a distant dream to have more Kansas colleges and universities with wrestling programs but dreams lead to vision which lead to action which lead to results. With Newman's decision to add a women's wrestling program we have more reasons to dream of even better days ahead for wrestling in Kansas.

Good Luck Coach Stovall!

I heard that women's wrestling at Newman is still waiting approval. Is Newman actually going to get it or not?

They had an ad in the paper a couple of weeks ago looking for a womens soccer coach so I would say that the chances have deminished.