A good move for Wagner College

By Jason Bryant
jbryant@intermatwrestle.com

When you’re coming off an 0-19 season, there isn’t much you can do to get some press.

For Wagner College’s wrestling program, any additional love from the various media outlets -- print, radio, web -- would be an escape from the norm. The norm being absolutely no press.

Wagner coach Doug Jesse could be thinking about sending wrestlers to the NCAA Championships and getting a little more ink, and the school’s latest move could make more press more plausible. The Seahawks have left the Colonial Athletic Association as an affiliate member in wrestling and will qualify through the East Region starting this coming season.

Technically, Wagner’s athletic department would qualify its wrestling program as “independent,” but the move, while quiet and found through a Google news search, is a good move for the program.

The CAA has undergone a considerable facelift in the last 20 years. It had been established in 1985 as another all-sports conference, combining teams from the old Metro conference, the ECAC-South and the Sun Belt. This year, the conference officially starts football as a sanctioned sport, taking over for the Atlantic 10, which had been governing the football conference which included most of the CAA’s all-sports members.

When Hofstra, Towson, Drexel and Northeastern joined the CAA, the remnants of the East Coast Wrestling Association came along with Hofstra and Drexel in wrestling to form an 11-team conference.

Wagner has been at or next to the bottom each year since the merger. Hofstra’s national resurgence and depth of the conference offered by challengers Rider, Drexel and Old Dominion have made qualifying wrestlers from the small, non-scholarship program on Staten Island exceedingly difficult.

Head coach Doug Jesse, the youngest in Division I, just finished up his second season and thought it was time for a move.

“I brought it up to our AD (shifting to the East Region),” said Jesse. “We had discussed in the past a little bit, before I was even here. Joe Ryan had brought the idea. It hung in the balance for a little bit. After my first year here, I brought it up again and over the last year or so and started looking into it.”

Jesse’s not going to avoid former CAA schools with scheduling, but feels competing the conference wasn’t going to help him improve the program.

But the Seahawks would be leaving a 20-plus bid conference for the East Region, which qualifies only the champion and one wild-card – until new qualifier regulations are passed by the NCAA.

Is going for less to get more a smart move? Completely.

“First of all, yes there are less qualifying spots,” said Jesse of the East Region. “The top guy goes and maybe one or two wildcards. If you look at the CAA, in essence, that’s almost what it was becoming for us anyway.”

“We had the two top spots and three wildcards (in 2007),” he said. “You look at a team like Hofstra, which will take almost their entire team. Those spots are gone in every weight. Now you’re looking at one spot and a couple of wildcards.”

“When you’re competing against Old Dominion, Rider, Drexel, George Mason … some of those schools are amazing. This gives us at least a little bit better of an opportunity to compete that are closer to our level competition wise and this will be the first year since I’ve been here that we’re actually going to have a full team.”

Wagner will now compete for NCAA Championship qualification against second-year Liberty, Duquesne, Delaware State, Gardner-Webb and Millersville – teams that don’t exactly scare the daylights out of the nation’s elite, but once in a blue moon, will have a wrestler push someone to the edge at the NCAA championships.

“I think in the long-run, we can have an impact on the East Region,” said Jesse.

Last year, the Seahawks finished 0-19 and never won more than three matches in any dual meet. There’s only one way for the program to move.

But one thing that Wagner is desperately searching for – and something more likely due to the shift to the East Region -- is an NCAA qualifier. When was the last NCAA qualifier from Wagner in the Division I era?

Good question.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure,” said Jesse. “I think we’ve had one ever. Not sure if that was even before they were Division I, maybe when they were Division III. I’ve tried to find that out and no one’s been able to give me an answer on that for sure.”

Undergraduate enrollment is the smallest of any school with wrestling in Division I – 1,929 – so Jesse’s not to worried about recruiting losses in the shift from one conference to the other.

“I don’t think being in the CAA hurt our recruiting because if I’m getting the kids that I want, they want to compete against the Hofstras, Riders, Old Dominions. I want those kids that want to be competitive,” said Jesse. “We can still have the opportunity to wrestle those guys in a dual, we’ll have one or two of the CAA teams on our schedule. So we’re still going to see some of them. When they realize they’re competing for a spot to go to nationals, it won’t be against those guys.”

Wagner’s best hope for a qualifier out of the East Region this year is fifth-year senior Mike Tutunjian, a Long Island native wrestling at either 141 or 149 pounds.

Jesse feels the competing in the CAA should prepare wrestlers like Tutunjian for a run to make the nationals in 2008 through the East Region.

“I think (past competition) should help,” said Jesse. “Especially for my seniors, they’ve been wrestling them in year out. We’ve wrestled (Hofstra’s Mike) Patrovich, We’ve wrestled (Hofstra’s Charles) Griffin … any of those guys.”

“(Tutunjian) is a fifth-year senior, he’s competed against a lot of those top guys and I hope some of that experience will help him a lot,” said Jesse.

Jesse also hopes the move will put the wrestling program on solid footing within the school’s athletics department. In 2006, the school announced it was dropping the sport – only to be re-instated within 48 hours of the news hitting the web.

“We’ve talked with our president several times,” said Jesse. “I’ve gone in with a couple of our alumni and Dr. (Richard) Guarasci has been great so far. He came over to the NYAC last fall to a wrestling banquet with us and I’m hoping that we can keep the support going.”

InterMat Lead Writer
Jason Bryant