Bob Williams who wrestled for OSU on Ed Gallagher's last team in 1939 took 3rd at 174+/- pounds behind Henry Wittenburg, and a 2xx champ from Indiana whose name I don't remember. Started the wrestling program at Campus High when it opened in the fall of 1960, which was my sophomore year.

He had coached at Hoxie for 20 years, and despite having teams finish as high as 3rd, never could beat St. Francis in a dual meet. He told us that St. Francis would run two varsity teams during the regular season, one team might be wrestling in Colorado, while the other would be wrestling in Kansas. They wrestled off to see who got to be in the Northwest Kansas League Tournament, and Northwest District Tournament. St. Francis won state 5 years in a row in the 1950s,when there was only one class.

Douglass won the first state tournament in 1930, and 30 years later under Darrell Hill won it again, with everybody, but the heavyweight qualfying for state.

I think Ken Spicer started the program at Wichita South. Dee Gard started Wichita Heights.

What you don't see today that you saw then, was the head coaches of schools officiating dual meets and tournaments. We'd usually have Ken Spicer to referee our dual meets at Campus. Bob Williams would regularly go to Oklahoma to referee tournaments. With very few exceptions they were also very good referees, because they really understood the sport.

I don't know how many schools were in the first few state tournaments. I do know at one time all of the Wichita schools which were comprised of East and North were in the Ark Valley League along with Hutchinson, Newton, El Dorado, Winfield, and Wellington. Ark City started wrestling in 1960 as did Campus. Campus got into the Ark Valley League my senior year, but we usually wrestled everybody but Hutchinson in the dual meet season.

I'm amazed at how strong the northeast part of the state has gotten. When I was in high school if you could get out of the southeast district, which was held at Douglass, it included West, South, and North, and Heights, plus all of the Ark Valley schools, except Hutch,you figured you would make it to state. The next weekend Campus would generally hold the east regional. East, Southeast, Emporia, and Topeka Highland would come it with 9-11 kids per team qualifying out of the northeast district. Each school would be lucky to get 2-3 qualifiers for state.

I remember that if you lost in the district, the opponent you lost to had to make the finals. I lost in the quarters to Mike Davis from Wichita South, who then lost to Garwin McDaniel (sp) from Douglass in the semifinals. The Southeast district at 165 had the 1,3, and 4th placers at the state tournament.

I've lived in Arizona since 1978, but will be back to visit next in two weeks,prior to going to the Oklahoma Open, and the OU/OSU game. Even though I've been gone a long time, I'm very pround of how my home state of Kansas is doing in producing quality high school wrestlers.