Sad news for our sport. Any phone calls and or emails to NMHU would be appreciated. My son Gage attends NMHU and the team is a good group of wrestlers and kids that will be devastated by the loss of their program. Coach Moses is an amazing coach with limited resources.



College may ax two sports

By Dave Kavanaugh and David Giuliani

Highlands University’s wrestling and rodeo programs may be destined for the chopping block.

On Wednesday, the school’s Board of Regents will consider the administration’s proposal to cut the two sports. The university has seen its athletics budget drop by nearly 15 percent since fiscal year 2009 — the result of statewide spending cuts.

“This isn’t an easy decision to make. It’s not as if people are jumping up and down to get rid of these programs,” Highlands spokesman Sean Weaver said.

Highlands introduced both wrestling and women’s rodeo — to be funded under special legislative appropriations — in 2005, during the presidential tenure of Manny Aragon.

Sports Information Director Gavino Archuleta estimated that the original amount budgeted was roughly $350,000. However, he said, the amount available for those programs has dwindled since then.

He said the school has had to rent facilities for both teams — the Zamora arena for rodeo and the former Northeastern Regional Hospital basement for wrestling. (The latter was discontinued this past year.)

Highlands wrestling coach Doug Moses said he doesn’t understand administrators’ reasoning.

“We’re talking about young people’s lives and their educations and the sport they’ve been in and worked hard in all their lives. We’re the only (wrestling) program in the state and one of the only ones in the region. We ought to showcase it. It’s good for enrollment,” Moses said.

He said many of the wrestlers wouldn’t be in college if it weren’t for the program.

“We’ve got no less than seven former New Mexico state champs in our program. And we’ve got good kids. We’ve had national qualifiers every year that we’ve had the program (since it was reinstated in 2005-06). The program has some merits. I don’t understand where (administrators) are coming from,” Moses said.

He said the past season has been a “tough go,” noting that the team has had to practice off campus at Robertson High.

“We’ve just tried to make the best of it. I can’t say enough about the support and cooperation shown by Robertson’s coaches and administration,” he said.

Highlands rodeo coach Jon Peek said he had been in touch with Highlands’ brass.

“What it’s boiled down to is ‘What is the future of our program, where is it now, and what is it going to be? How can we get it to sustain itself?’ I’ve been talking with my team about this. It takes time (to come up with possible funding solutions and alternatives),” Peek said.

“Community support has been there. The community involvement we’ve had has been uplifting,” he said. “We’ve got such great community involvement from ranchers and others. We’ve been hoping to tie it all in.”

• • •

Wrestling has produced the last two national champions for the university. In 1987, Highlands heavyweight Hector Hernandez won the NAIA national title. Shortly thereafter, the university discontinued the wrestling program as part of a nationwide trend in light of Title IX gender equity mandates.

Those mandates called for athletic participation opportunities to more closely mirror the overall student populations on campus in terms of gender breakdown. Most schools, citing financial realities, opted to kill existing men’s programs — mainly in Olympic, non-revenue sports like wrestling, swimming and gymnastics — rather than add new women’s programs in order to address disparities.

Aragon’s administration reintroduced wrestling in part because New Mexico had no other collegiate program of its kind, which would make Highlands’ new program an instant draw for high school grapplers in the state and region.

Moses, who’d established a strong program at the University of Southern Colorado (now Colorado State University-Pueblo) before it fell victim to a budget ax in 2001, was hired to oversee Highlands wrestling.

In each of its five years, Highlands has had wrestlers qualify for the national tournament — Patrick Sharp and Charles Saguil; Ross Montour and Jesse Boggs; Boggs, Jesse Feinsod and Luke McPeek; and Boggs and Seth Wright this past season. This past season, Highlands 125-pounder Wright won the school’s first NCAA national championship. Sharp, Feinsod and Wright have all earned All-American status.

• • •

Rodeo, a club activity not sanctioned by the NCAA as an intercollegiate sport, began as a women’s team at Highlands but has expanded to include a men’s club as well. Each of the last two years, athletes from Highlands rodeo have qualified for and competed in the college national finals. Peek, a member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, is the second head coach in the program’s five years.

Ed Manzanares, Highlands’ athletics director, said the budget decisions have been difficult.

“This is a dark day for athletics,” he said.

At a glance

What: Highlands University Board of Regents meeting.

When: 1 p.m. today.

Where: Highlands’ Kennedy Hall.

Information: Call 454-3387.