Trent:

I appreciate the input. One of the goals of the fund would definitely be to have funds available one day that could be used to entice a Wichita State, Kansas State or Kansas University to start a Division I program. It would not be the sole or primary purpose of this fund. Another major goal would be to provide continual support for the Kansas colleges and universities that already have teams and to also be able to entice more Non D-1 universities and colleges in Kansas to start wrestling programs. These would be universities like Emporia State, Washburn, Pittsburg State, Johnson County Community College, Kansas City, Kansas Community College, Hutchinson Community College, Ottawa University, and Mid-American Nazarene to name a few. There are a lot more.

We need to become like Iowa with the number of colleges and universities that have teams. It is not just the D-1 teams in Iowa (University of Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa) that have wrestling programs. There are a lot of smaller colleges in Iowa with teams. That in itself helps hold down expenses for the teams due to more economical travel and it also allows for some heated dual rivalries between these schools. The great result is that this creates a tremendous amount of opportunity for Iowa high school wrestlers to extend their wrestling careers beyound high school and it also gives many of them, who might not otherwise be able to attend college, the opportunity to attend college and prepare for a lifetime career in their field of study. I imagine many of these colleges and universities also have wrestling camps and other promotion type events that benefit the Iowa youth wrestlers.

I know that the D-1 appeal is a major goal for a lot of people. It is probably the first thing that motivates us to want to participate in making college wrestling grow in our State of Kansas. It is been a major goal for me too. It still is. I really want to see programs someday at Kansas, Kansas State and Wichita State. I do believe it should be a major goal of this fund. However, I do believe that we need to take care of the programs currently in existence and work to build new programs at all levels. The environment for adding a college wrestling program is a little different at some of the smaller schools and it actually works in our favor to get new programs added at those schools vs. a bigger university like our D-1 schools. That is why we have additions of programs at schools like Newman, Baker and now Bethany in recent years. Right now we have four 4 year universities with programs: Fort Hays State, Newman, Baker and Bethany. We have five junior college wrestling programs in Kansas at Labette (long time national power), Neosho, Pratt, Colby and NW Kansas Technical College. We need to make sure all these smaller Kansas colleges thrive and that maybe will entice the growth of more smaller programs and possibly eventually a D-1 school will take notice. Perhaps Baker University was influenced to add a program by seeing Newman University starting one. And perhaps the recent addition of the Baker program and it's early success helped influence Bethany College to announce that it was adding a wrestling program next year.

Trent, on your suggestion are you saying that we should have a general fund but also allow donors an option to designate a percentage all the way up to 100% to a college of their choice? Say as an example that the General Endowment Fund is set up to take donations and pay out on an annual basis 40% of the General Fund balance to the nine Kansas schools that have programs and reserve the rest for future expenditures for both the current schools and potential new programs including a potential D-1 programs. Are you suggesting it would be a good option to allow a donor to opt out of this general allocation and instead choose to designate their entire gift for future use for a new D-1 program at a specific school like Wichita State, Kansas State, or Kansas? I know that could probably be done although it would make administration and accounting for the Endowment Fund a little more difficult. Another question on that would be how long would you leave that designated money without ever using it if the particular university just will not add a new program? For example say you have a million built up in a fund designated for Kansas University but they still say no but Kansas State or Wichita State would say yes if that amount was available to them. I am just posing the question. I am not ruling out your suggestion. I prefer just a general option where a Board of directors of the fund would set up and vote on a general uniform policy of how funds are used, spent and accumulated for current and future programs. But I do know there are many in wrestling community whose sole purpose is to have a D-1 wrestling program started at WSU, KSU or KU. So I too thought about maybe an option should be given to the donor to designate a percentage for that purpose. I had not thought about designating a portion to a specific school and keeping separate funds for the individual schools within the General Fund.

It would be interesting to hear how others thoughts on this.