Cardinal wrestlers grapple with greatest opponent — Stanford
On Friday, the duffel bags will be packed for the trip. Plain black singlets. Warmups emblazoned not with the oncecoveted name of their university but instead with the words of their cause: “Keep Stanford Wrestling.”
Slated for a walk to the gallows by the school’s administration, the Stanford wrestling team is first headed to Sunday’s Pac12 championships at Oregon State. The wrestlers are determined to prove that not only are they worthy of a final truncated season, but a permanent place at Stanford.
“Our main goal is to keep this going,” said redshirt freshman Jaden Abas. “I’m not giving up my goals until the final word is set in stone.”
Abas expected to represent the future of the 104yearold wrestling program. Instead, his team was slated for termination by Stanford, along with 10 other varsity teams, in a decision announced last July.
“Competitively, we are at the best time of our program’s history,” said associate head coach
Ray Blake, who wrestled at Stanford in the mid2000s. “This season we returned the most AllAmericans, NCAA qualifiers and Pac12 champions in our history. And our talent core is young.”
Abas (149 pounds) went 62 while also completing a transfer application to Princeton. A secondgeneration wrestler — his father Gerry was a star at Fresno State and his uncle Stephen won silver at the Athens Olympics — Abas is not willing to abandon his own Olympic dreams due to the capriciousness of Stanford’s administration.
“I had the option to attend any university with my wrestling accolades and academic success,” said Abas, a twotime state champion at Rancho Bernardo High near San Diego. “Stanford was always the goal. But I’ve put too much in to just cut off my wrestling career.”
In contrast, Jason Miranda (133 pounds), is leaning toward staying. A true freshman from Poway (San Diego County), he was blindsided before he ever set foot on the Stanford campus.
“It’s a conflict I’ve been struggling with,” Miranda said. “A Stanford degree would not only set me up for the future, but potentially my kids. It’s a hard decision.”
The decision has only gotten tougher as Miranda has proved himself on the mat, with a 42 record. His parents and brothers, one of whom wrestles at the Naval Academy, have urged him to reconsider transferring.
“I’m not in a rush to make a final decision,” he said. “I’m staying focused on the Pac12s and hopefully will go on to the NCAAs.”
Both young wrestlers hold out hope that Stanford’s decision will be reversed. Keep Stanford Wrestling has been proactive, raising pledges to endow the program, planning to start a women’s program and exploring legal options. Last month, wrestling parents enlisted an attorney, who sent a letter to the university charging fraud and deceit in recruiting. To date, they have received no response.
Since July, the team has fought to compete. With Stanford shut down due to COVID19, several wrestlers decamped to Sacramento to stay at the home of freshman Peter Ming for two months in the fall. Ming’s parents, Joe and Kathy, created a bunk room, threw down mats in a barn structure and turned their WiFi over to Zoom classes.
“We got to have the freshman experience,” Miranda said. “We really bonded.”
Competing at weight requires weeks of training and nutritional planning, so the team was eager to get officially started. But shortly after they returned to Stanford, Santa Clara County instituted strict COVID19 ordinances. The team scrambled, reassigning housing so that wrestlers lived together in suites by weight class, constituting “households.” They couldn’t wrestle indoors so they placed mats outside and wrestled by household in the December elements.
Stanford promised all eliminated teams “one final season.” But when wrestling was set to start in January, the team kept being stonewalled by administration and morale sunk. Finally, angry parents emailed provost Persis Drell, pointing out that both men’s and women’s basketball teams — also winter sports — and football had been allowed to travel for continuous weeks. Within the day, travel to the first competition was approved.
The ordeal told the students exactly where they stood in terms of Stanford’s priorities: well behind “revenue producing” students.
“One hundred percent,” Abas said. “We saw the unfairness.”
Miranda said, “It kind of hurts to see that, especially since Stanford says it has such pride in the success of its sports programs.”
Through a threeweek season, the team went 53, 40 in the Pac12, and heads into championships confident (though it will miss at least one starter due to COVID protocols). That is the kind of success the team expected, putting it at odds with one of the reasons Stanford used to explain why the 11 sports were targeted: “Prospects for future success for the sport at Stanford.”
Wrestling also contradicts other listed justifications, such as potential savings (wrestling has one of the lowest costs per athlete) and youth participation (high school wrestling figures are at an alltime high).
Another criteria Stanford used to justify cutting sports particularly upsets the wrestling community: “Impact on the diversity of our studentathlete population.”
According to statistics, wrestling is one of the most ethnically diverse sports and second only to football in terms of participation by firstgeneration collegians.
“That makes me very upset,” said Abas, whose family has Filipino and Korean heritage. “They’re very hypocritical. My dad was a firstgeneration college athlete and wrestling gave him a better way of life. For kids from lowerincome households, wrestling doesn’t cost a lot and can provide an opportunity.”
Miranda, who is Mexican American, is trying to resolve what Stanford said it stood for during his recruiting process and its subsequent actions.
“It really doesn’t add up,” he said. “It seems invalid that they would say they want more diversity and take out a team shown to be ethnically diverse.”
For months, the wrestlers have grappled with the hypocrisy and disappointment. Now they look forward to grappling with the competition, in hopes of continuing on.
“I feel a little betrayal,” said Miranda.
Which is why he and his teammates will don black singlets. The name “Stanford” doesn’t mean what they thought it did.