Champ’s opponents included his school
Stanford wrestler not surprised by muted response
What did Shane Griffith do for an encore after winning a national championship and turning a bright spotlight on embattled Stanford wrestling?
He went home to Westwood, N.J., to finish a 12page paper on pandemic resiliency.
If I may have a word with his bio engineering professor, Griffith should write this paper in the firstperson. He is a picture of pandemic resiliency.
“I believe we’ve had the worst circumstances of anyone in collegiate sports,” Griffith said Tuesday.
Griffith, a junior academically, overcame, in order: the brutal elimination of his program, a crushing academic load that should allow him to graduate
this summer, the pursuit of a place to wrestle in the future, difficult training conditions and indifference from his own athletic department.
“The whole process has been pretty devastating,” he said. “It all adds a little more fuel to the tank.”
Against that backdrop, his betterseeded opponent in Saturday’s final probably didn’t stand a chance. Griffith has lost only once in his collegiate wrestling career — in the conference finals earlier this month — and became the second national champion in Stanford’s 104year wrestling history. After he won, wearing a black singlet stripped of the university logo, chants of “Keep Stanford wrestling” filled the arena in St. Louis. Griffith’s victory was not only a personal triumph but a communal protest.
Griffith, 22, wasn’t even sure he was going to wrestle this year. After Stanford announced in July, with no warning, that it was dropping the program along with 10 other teams, his future was in turmoil.
He didn’t want to travel back and forth to California to train, because his mother is a teacher and his father worked in law enforcement and the family was concerned about COVID safety. He buckled down with an increased class load in his science, technology and society major and decided to enter the transfer protocol and pursue options to use his remaining eligibility (he has three years left) in a graduate program at another university.
In the fall, however, he returned to campus to train under challenging conditions related to Santa Clara County’s COVID restrictions. The team was grouped into pods by weight. They trained outside — their wrestling mats were sometimes soaked with rain. They set up stationary bikes in their bathroom. They didn’t see anyone but each other. Griffith’s memories from Christmas and New Year’s are of doing pushups with his teammates.
“Campus was abandoned,” Griffith said. “It has a psychological effect on you. It was pretty barren and draining … depressing.”
The team struggled to get clearance from the athletic department to travel to competition in January, even though the football team and basketball teams had spent weeks traveling. They had turned to donors to independently raise funds when, finally — with just one day’s notice, they were cleared to travel.
“I think people would be surprised if they saw everything we went through,” Griffith said.
His loss at the Pac12 championships at Oregon State refocused him. He realized his main goal was to be a national champion and that was still ahead of him.
In St. Louis, he was reunited with his parents, whom he hadn’t seen in half a year. After his victory he was inundated with congratulations, from the wrestling community and beyond.
He did not, however, hear from any Stanford administrators.
“No, they would never reach out to me,” he said. “They’re probably more mad at me than anything.”
Stanford athletics did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Griffith’s national title. On Saturday the athletic department Twitter account @GoStanford tweeted, “Shane Griffith is a national champion. The redshirt sophomore completed his run at the NCAA championships atop the podium, Saturday, at the Enterprise Center.” The dry message was notably missing the exclamation points and emojis that accompany almost every other post.
Griffith will return to campus after spring break and hope for some semblance of normalcy in what he assumes will be his last few months at Stanford. The coaches at other programs he is in touch with are willing to wait for him to decide his future.
“I’ve got to do what’s best for me,” he said. “I’m not ready to call it quits after everything I’ve put into wrestling.
“But I’ll keep fighting the fight and supporting this program. It’s us against the world.”
Griffith’s championship has done a lot to expose Stanford’s decision to the world.
“There’s nothing Stanford hates more,” Griffith said, “than bad publicity.”