Cody Thorn
On Sept. 11, the future of the William Jewell College wrestling program was put on hold or given a death sentence.
It really depends on who you talk with about the situation.
The school held an impromptu meeting with the men’s wrestling program and announced the operation of the program would cease following the 2023-24 school year and there would be no program going forward.
“The pause is indefinite as a timeline for reactivating the program will rely on an assessment of program viability when the College is near completion of expanded athletic facilities,” the school wrote in a press release it issued on Sept. 15. “Assessing viability will include ensuring a strong candidate pool for a head coach can be cultivated. This decision in no way impacts the women’s wrestling program.”
The news caught most of the Cardinals wrestlers off guard – but in the era of social media, why would a NCAA institution wait four days to release news that was already in the public purview?
Many question why the men’s program was put on pause but not the women’s program? Many wrestlers within the program learned of the news of the program’s pause moments after hearing coach Tom Molony had resigned.
His departure came almost a year after he was hired to coach the program, replacing Keenan Hagerty, who took a job at the University of Missouri.
Multiple wrestlers on the team talked with Molony in the days leading up to the news. He was gone the weekend of Sept. 9-10 going to Indiana to recruit future Cardinals.
Many wrestlers said the coach said he would see them on Tuesday when he returned.
What exactly transpired from the time he told his wrestlers he was looking to future wrestlers for the programs and days later he resigned?
“It went from that to never seeing him again and never talking to him again … it’s very weird,” freshman Wade Stanton said, who signed with the Cardinals after a standout career at Mid-Buchanan in Faucett. “I know he cares for us and I’m sure there’s a lot of information out there we don’t know about why he resigned and we’re not going to ever probably know, which sucks. I don’t think any of us can see him resigning on his own without knowing the program wasn’t going to be there. Without an ultimatum or something. It just doesn’t make sense.”
That has been the million-dollar question.
Did Molony resign and then the school decided to pause the program or did he decide to resign once he was told the program would be put on pause?
That is one of many questions that is left unanswered.
Here are a few others that came up.
When was this decision made? Was it really on Sept. 11 or has then been discussed by the leadership of the school prior to that? In August, the school hired men’s basketball coach Chris McCabe to be the interim athletic director.
Many of the wrestlers felt it was unfair to make the decision so late in the semester. If the program was truly struggling and the school didn’t think it was feasible to go forward with it, why wasn’t it announced in the summer to give the wrestlers a chance to find a new home without starting the semester? Was it a matter of making sure the school year started and tuition was paid before breaking the news?
Many wrestlers said that question has come up with no answer from the upper administration of the Great Lakes Valley Conference school.
“How come this wasn’t brought up before, how come you guys never told us anything before?” said junior wrestler Mario Quezada, who attended Grandview High School, recalled of the news of the program’s pause with administration. “It would’ve made transferring a lot easier and then a bunch of the guys wouldn’t be missing class and all that to go out on trips now trying to find a new place to wrestle.”
Desiree Ramos, who was hired as the women’s coach in 2022, will serve as the interim men’s coach this season. However, many of the wrestlers who reached out to MissouriWrestling.com in the aftermath of the news said they have no desire to compete in a program that has no future.
So, there is a chance that Ramos won’t have anyone to coach this winter.
Many of the wrestlers are already in the transfer portal and have taken recruiting trips to various schools trying to find a spot to wrestle in the 2024-25 school year.
However, many had emotions that ranged from stunned to angry to confused.
The program was just reinstated three years ago. Why wasn’t the funding in place to make sure the program could survive in the future? A full recruiting class never got a chance to build the program up. This year’s roster is dotted with homegrown talent from the Show-Me State who were state champions or all-staters multiple times. Add in transfers that knew Molony, the Cardinals, on paper, could’ve continued to grow.
But many within and without the program question the school’s dedication to the sport.
Newcomer Josiah Quiroz is a junior transfer from Bakersfield, California. He was convinced by Molony this summer to join the program. He moved to Liberty in early August and about a month later, the move across the country and the news left him in shock.
However, he noticed one thing when he got to Liberty.
There was only one mat for the team to practice on and the wrestling space wasn’t what he had experienced in other settings. The wrestling room was formerly the dance room inside the Mabee Center.
Another area of contention is The Link, a 56,000-square-foot building that is planned to house athletics, an academic studio, classrooms, social space and wellness and fitness. Ground was broken in Oct. 2022.
When Quezada was being recruited by Hagerty in high school – before he chose to go to Missouri Valley College – he remembers hearing about the project.
“It was supposed to help the program take the next step, but it’s kind of been nothing to speak of,” he said “I mean, we see construction every day going to class but even the staff, they’re not truly sure what the Link is about and what it will hold. Keenan brought the Link up a lot when he was recruiting me. He said we will have a brand new facility and we will have this and that and honestly, I never saw the true point in the Link. I think it is just a waste of money.”
Current University of Central Missouri wrestler Connor Johnston was at Wiliam Jewell before transferring after Hagerty left.
“I went on my recruitment visit in October of 2020,” said Johnston, who wrestled at Knob Noster. “At that time, they told us that it would be completed by the spring semester of my freshman year. And it’s kind of ironic; for the majority of guys who committed, I would confidently say that The Link was a huge factor in their decision. And that is ultimately the reason why (Jewell) is kind of using that as their excuse to cut the program.”
Johnston noted things outside of wrestling ‘weren’t that great’ when he was there and when Hagerty left, a large chunk of the wrestlers he recruited found other places to play rather than stay at Jewell.
The news took Johnston by surprise and he reached out to the wrestlers he knew at Jewell.
“It’s disappointing and a blow to the wrestling community,” he said. “I feel like it’s a big slap in the face to the athletes. At this point, you’re already committed to this semester. It’s too late to go anywhere else. You just try to show support and wish them well.
“It’s ironic looking back on it and all the broken promises and like the complex. That’s one of the biggest reasons I committed way back then and they didn’t even break any ground in my time there. Now they finally are (breaking ground) and quote, unquote, don’t have the funding to keep the program. It is kind of a bad look for them. I don’t want to trash (Jewell) but they kind of cut their throat a little by not doing a couple of things.”
