Slippery Rock to Drop Wrestling

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Another one bites the dust:

http://www.themat.com/index.php?page=sh ... leID=13970 (http://www.themat.com/index.php?page=showarticle&ArticleID=13970)

[Brad Fischer]

I lived in the Slippery Rock area for a while. I also met some of their wrestlers over the summer. It is a short sighted-travisty.

$20,000 for opperating budget
$30,000 one paid coach (as advertised last time the job was open)
$30,000 is probably a high guess for 1.5 scholarships
$80,000 in possible savings???

For a school that size that is a drop in the bucket. It is not enough to make a huge difference in the overall balance sheet.

Now watch closely as the football and basketball budgets do not lose a penny. When I lived there they were trying to build up the football program by pumping a lot of money into it. It is a sad thing that 8 programs have to be cut to maintain the budget of a couple.

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Add Montclair State to the ever growing list of colleges dropping wrestling:

http://www.themat.com/index.php?page=sh ... leID=14210 (http://www.themat.com/index.php?page=showarticle&ArticleID=14210)

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Montclair State eliminates wrestling

Friday, March 10, 2006
BY RUDY LARINI
Star-Ledger Staff
Grappling with allegations of job discrimination, a sexual harassment complaint, criticism of the coach and a defection of team members, Montclair State University is dropping a wrestling program that has yielded two Division 3 national championships and more than two dozen individual national champions in its 67-year history.

One year after abandoning a plan to reduce the program to non-varsity club status, the school confirmed yesterday that it is scuttling the sport altogether.

Though university administrators did not cite specific reasons for their decision, they said they have become increasingly disenchanted with the program.

"Our student athletes need to have the most positive atmosphere around sports and academics that they can have and that just wasn't being provided," said Karen Pennington, vice president of student development and campus life.

The decision to drop wrestling leaves MSU with 17 varsity sports.

Wrestlers and others familiar with the program said they were stunned by the decision and directed their ire at school administrators and coach James Torres, who took over the program this year.

"I think it's disgusting; it's depressing. I'm disappointed," said Ted Levine, a wrestling booster and Paterson business owner whose $50,000 contribution was the largest in last year's fund-raising campaign to save the program.

"This is a shock to me," said former head coach Steve Strellner, who had a 223-218-4 record in 25 years before stepping down two years ago to hand the program over to his assistant, Joe Sabol.

Strellner said the wrestling program deserved better, having won Division 3 titles in 1976 and 1986, with 29 individual national champions and more than 100 All-Americans.

"It's one of the most successful programs at MSU -- us and baseball," Strellner said. "No way should it be done."

"I transferred from Ithaca to wrestle here. For them to just destroy it for one reason or another is ridiculous," said team member Anthony Gonzalez of Bayonne.

Team co-captain Sean Hayes of West Milford accused Torres of "constant demeaning and a negative attitude" that drove wrestlers like him from the team.

"He was too hard-nosed, arrogant and immature," Hayes said.

Gonzalez also assailed Torres' demeanor.

"He doesn't know how to talk to anybody. He has a short temper," Gonzalez said. "He destroyed this program."

Torres, 27, who came to Montclair State from Menlo College in California, where he served as head assistant wrestling coach, dismissed his wrestlers' criticism.

"That's fine," he said. "They've been saying bad things all year. I have no comment."

Sabol was replaced by Torres despite having led the campaign to save the program last year after one year as a part-time head coach in 2004-05. In his one season, he compiled a 5-6-1 record and was named Metropolitan Conference coach of the year.

The former coach said he suspects school officials might have deliberately undermined the program by hiring Torres. Sabol and others said the team started the season with more than 40 wrestlers, a number that dwindled to just a handful by the end of the campaign. MSU finished the season 4-11.

"There are a lot of people who thought the school's intent all along was to do this -- to bring in a head coach who was less than competent to run the program into the ground," Sabol said. "I didn't think that was the case before, but now that it's happened, I think it's definitely possible."

Sabol filed a complaint against the university with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging he was the victim of job discrimination for complaining about unequal treatment of men's and women's coaches by school officials.

He said his assistant coach was dismissed last year for not promptly reporting an incident in which wrestlers discovered a hidden video camera that was taping them changing in their locker room. A 42-year-old Clifton man was charged with leaving a duffel bag with the camera in the locker room.

Sabol alleged in his complaint that while his assistant was unfairly fired, a woman who coached the women's basketball team was allowed to quietly "resign" after university officials learned she was having sexual relations with one player on the team and drinking alcohol with others in their dormitory rooms.

The wrestling team faced further turmoil this year after a 19-year-old wrestler, Christian Crespo of Bloomfield, filed a complaint with the university against Torres, accusing the head coach of making sexually suggestive comments to him that culminated in Crespo leaving the team.

Pennington said the university could not comment on that incident or Sabol's EEOC complaint.