Originally Posted By: Ex Heights Coach
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.

Quote:
Mehringer became a star in both football and wrestling at the University of Kansas. Although his football ventures were covered, the school and the athletic department did little to fund his wrestling career. He worked and struggled to make money for trips to wrestling meets across the country.

At the time, the university�s wrestling team was small and coached by Leon Bauman. The team struggled financially with most members of the team only able to travel to local meets. In 1932, Mehringer captured the Missouri Valley Conference title as a sophomore, his first year of college eligibility (because of old rules disallowing freshman to compete).

That year Mehringer was able to make his only National Intercollegiate Meet tournament appearance in the heavyweight division, losing to eventual champion Jack Riley of Northwestern University in the second round. He failed to win a collegiate championship because his 1932 appearance would be the only tournament he could afford to attend.


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


Last edited by Husker Fan; 02/23/12 05:28 PM.

Vince Nowak
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