Several of us believe the time has arrived to start a Kansas College Wrestling Endowment fund. We all have an idea of how many wrestling programs have been lost over the last few decades. The recent announcement that perennial D-II wrestling powerhouse the University of Nebraska-Omaha (UNO) was planning to drop its wrestling team has sent shockwaves thru the entire national wrestling community. Who would have thought that an university whose team that had just won its third national title in a row could be considering dropping its program?

If this could happen to such a program we all know any college wrestling program is vulnerable. We have seen it happen all to often over the years. Everytime a program drops we lose more opportunity for our young wrestlers to continue their wrestling in college and for some of them their chance at a college education that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.

How do we combat this slow but steady erosion of college wrestling programs in our nation and for us especially in our own state of Kansas? Many of us believe that the wrestling community has to step up and financially support the current programs and to build an endowment fund that will give a level of current support to the Kansas college programs that are already in existence and to build the fund so it can also help fund future programs including a possible D-1 program at WSU, KSU or KU.

If this fund had started thirty years ago and it had been marketed well to the Kansas wrestling community and supported annually by the many wrestlers, parents, coaches, referees, fans and other interested parties of the Kansas wrestling community, we can all imagine how large this fund could be today and the level of support it could be providing to the current schools and who knows how many other programs could be in existence in Kansas today because of it.

I have been in contact with Mike Juby, Chairman of Board of Directors, USAW-KS and Sean McCarthy, former NCAA wrestler and STA club head coach, this week about the possibility of the USAW-KS organization being the adminstrator of this Kansas College Wrestling Endowment Fund. Mike Juby has expressed some interest in the USAW-KS becoming the adminstrator of such a fund. Mike has said that he would present it to the USAW-KS Board for approval for their organization to offer administrative support, their 501(c)(3) exemption for the purposes of accepting contributions to an endowment fund, management of investments, distributions of funds to the fund beneficiaries per the fund parameters, and reporting of results.

What Mike has asked of me is that we need parameters of the funds so the donors will know how, when and where the monies will be utilized and this will provide the blueprint for USAW Kansas to follow in managing the fund.

Mike has asked us to come up with a document on what the mission and function of the fund will be. Mike suggested that I also work with Sean McCarthy and any other interested parties in putting together a marketing plan to potential donors.

Once we present this plan to Mike Juby then he will present it to the Board of USAW-KS for approval. All that will need to be done before the fund could actually start accepting contributions.


So Do NOT Send Any Contributions to USAW-KS yet as this is not an official fund yet and needs USAW-KS Board approval first.

What we need from you now though is ideas on the plan that we need to come up with on the business plan of the fund with its mission statement, parameters of the fund for how the money will be used, marketing plan ideas, etc.

I will be meeting with Sean McCarthy (Smokeycabin on our forum) after Kids State to start this document if anyone would like to also join us in these planning meetings, please let us know.

Hopefully this will become a fund that will serve the Kansas wrestling community for decades to come. For it to become successful it is going to need the contined participation of all of us in the Kansas wrestling community. We will all need to support it with our contributions of money, talent and time for it to succeed.

We do not want to hear of an another announcement like UNO's last week for our Kansas colleges. We want to have more of our colleges announcing new programs like Bethany College made this year. Let's make our college wrestling colleges grow in Kansas!

You can send me private messages with ideas or interest in becoming part of the planning process. You could also post ideas on this topic.

Thank you.