WRESTLERS GO OUT FIGHTING
Boston U program will be shuttered when season ends
In ancient Greece, the Spartans made their stand with 300. In wrestling, the Boston University Terriers are down to three.
Nestor Taffur, Tyler Scotton and Mitchell Wightman qualified Sunday for the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships. How long they last at nationals will be how long wrestling lasts at their school, which plans to drop the sport after this season.
Carl Adams, in his 33rd year as coach, has preached staying positive. The test Sunday was the 18team Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA) tournament. At the Palestra, the historic basketball gym, the action was on four mats. BU tied for 10th; Cornell won.
“I’m fighting for my family. I’m fighting for our legacy,” said Taffur, a senior from Bound Brook, N.J., who flexed his muscles at center mat after earning the 157pound title with an 8-2 win against Markus Scheidel of Columbia. “I want to make sure that when I finish the season I’m not just the last man standing for our program but also the last man standing in my weight class.”
Scotton, a junior from Willingboro, N.J., upset a top seed en route to a fourth-place finish at 141 pounds that landed him a spot March 20-22 at the NCAAs in Oklahoma City. “If this is going to be the last year for our program, it’s a good way to go out. Go out with a bang and show everybody what Boston University wrestling is all about,” Scotton said. “We’ve got some studs, and we fight.”
Wightman, a 165-pounder from Warwick, N.Y, earned his NCAA trip with a fifth place, the last of the berths at that weight.
“The kids did phenomenal, considering what they had to deal with all season,” said Adams, a two-time NCAA champ (and Dan Gable teammate) at Iowa State in the early 1970s.
Adams said he has not lost hope BU might reconsider.
“But the bottom line is that you have to go on with your life,” he said. “And although I think it’s had a devastating impact on alumni and kids in the program, at the same time it’s been an unbelievable learning experience about life and the curve balls that can be thrown at you at times.”
BU announced April 1 that the program, which began in the 1950s as a club team and has been a Division I sport for 45 seasons, would be eliminated. It was a jolt but not unusual in wrestling.
Last year, international wrestling had to wage a campaign to head off being removed from the roster of Olympic sports in 2020.
In college wrestling, there were 146 NCAA Division I teams in the 1981-82 season. This season, there are 77.
Typically, there is discussion and debate when a wrestling program is dropped about whether it was a casualty of Title IX and gender equity. At BU, its wrestling alumni also point to another element, support the school gets from a sporting goods company.
“I understand business deci- sions. The problem that I have is the way in which this had been handled ... and the New Balance money really being a trigger to a lot of this,” says 1997 graduate David Leonardo, a leader of wrestling alumni and the Save BU Wrestling campaign.
Boston-based New Balance is an athletic shoe/apparel firm and owns Brine, maker of gear for lacrosse, field hockey, soccer and volleyball. In early 2012, BU announced that with the help of a $3 million gift from New Balance it would add a field for field hockey, New Balance Field. The university also said it would elevate men’s lacrosse from a club sport to varsity status, starting with the 2013-14 season, and add women’s lightweight crew in 2012-13.
When the school said it would discontinue wrestling, it said bringing the program to championship caliber would require an immense infusion of resources, new facilities and more staffing.
Adams has a dual meet record of 306-213-7 (5-9 this season), with 10 conference titles at BU, but the last came in 1994. He has qualified at least one wrestler for the NCAAs in all but one season.
Leonardo, who attended Adams’ summer wrestling camps, says a better decision would be to keep wrestling and add women’s volleyball. Wrestling supporters have a Save BU Wrestling Facebook page. An offshoot is a Boycott New Balance Facebook page.
Adams says his annual budget is about $187,000. That includes all expenses except for the 9.9 scholarships allowed by the NCAA.
Leonardo said BU has practiced in the same wrestling room for 40 years.
“It’s literally a dungeon down there,” he says.
The school says it will honor scholarships of all wrestlers for the rest of their undergraduate work, and transfers will be immediately eligible to wrestle.
The team has been followed by 22-year-old filmmakers Brandon Lavoie and Mike Abelson, for a documentary on the season: It Hurts to Win. They’ll follow the three Terriers to nationals.
“In a cinematic sense, it’s compelling,” Lavoie says. “But these guys have taught me so much ... just how they’ve been handling the situation. In the face of adversity, they just keep going.”
After the final mat was rolled up Sunday, Adams was named EIWA Coach of the Year by vote of his fellow coaches. Taffur was among the first to congratulate him.
“It’s been an incredible job and career for me,” Adams said, “so I have nothing to complain about when I look back on my life.”