The college students
The response I received after the story was published was overwhelming. Thank you to everyone who responded so positively after the story came out. One of the people who contacted me was Matt Jennissen, who at the time was starting his sophomore year at UMD. He wrestled in high school for his dad at Cambridge-Isanti.
"When I got up to school (at UMD), "I saw there wasn't any wrestling at the high school level or even a club team at any of the colleges," said Jennissen. "I wanted to change that because I was missing it from high school."
He didn't start his freshman year until the second semester last year so the club took some time to get rolling. He was able to get a handful of guys interested and went to the area of the school administration that was in charge of student associations.
"They didn't have any space for us or any mats so we got in touch with Nate Bipes, who runs the North Shore Wrestling Club, which is a youth program. We would go in three days a week after (the youth program) finished. We had ten guys at the start and by the end had about four guys come to the practices."
With the word out a little, and because they were able to start right away in 2009, the attendance at practices went up. At the top end they had twenty four kids interested in the program and would usually have six to ten guys at the practices.
As more people have gotten involved, the club will try to expand. They are going to try to do some fundraising after this season to try to do some open tournaments next year.
They have taken baby steps despite not received any help from UMD.
"We are registered as a student organization," said Jennissen. "At first I asked them about an extra auxiliary gym that is not really in use. If we could come up with the mats, I asked them if we could store the mats there and use it when it wasn't in use. They said that wasn't OK. When I tried to get us registered (as a club sport) through the Recreational Sports and Outdoors Program they didn't really give me a reason (why they couldn't). They never got back to me."
Jennissen is hopeful for the future.
"With it going to be our third year and with this being Kathryn Martin's last year as Chancellor here, we are optimistic we will get some more support. We are basically plugging away at the lowest level we can."
A grass roots crusade
The help Jennissen and his club have received from Bipes comes from one man's crusade to get wrestling going at the youth level in the Duluth area.
Bipes wrestled for McLeod West in the mid-nineties and was a two-time state entrant there. His competitive wrestling career was over, but after college he knew he still wanted to be involved in the sport. After his family re-located to the Duluth area he started to volunteer with Superior (WI)'s high school program.
"I got my son involved when he was in kindergarten with their youth program," said Bipes. "That is when I ran into a couple of other guys I knew (Luther Darby and Brian Carle) and the three of us got together. I have always been a Minnesota guy at heart and we started to try to get something going for the area up here."
They started looking for a mat and for a place to hold practices. Ironically, the mat they use is the old UMD mat that Bipes got from the youth program in Cloquet, Minnesota.
"They (the Cloquet booster club and program) have been a big help and a support though out the whole process. They send kids our way and we have been working together to expand wrestling in the area."
At first it took him contacting everyone in the area he could think of for help, but it took a year for Bipes to even find a school that would let him use a room for his club.
He finally found a spot in an elementary school about fifteen minutes outside of town. With a place to go, the club had an abbreviated season and about thirty kids in year one. They just finished their third season and have about twelve kids who have been with the club since its start.
Bipes found out about Jennissen and his guys through The Guillotine. They met and have benefited each other. Bipes gives the college guys mat time after the North Shore Club has finished and the college guys -- specifically Cullen Berg from Simley and Kyle Larson from Chaska helped the club get a freestyle and Greco-Roman program going.
"Right now things couldn't look better for us," said Bipes. "We've got kids in the program that are coming back. We've got a great core of younger kids. We had 42 kids and fifteen that stayed for freestyle and Greco. If they stick together and we can keep this progressing we are not going to be just another program. We are running our program longer every year. We had guys wrestling at the freestyle and Greco state tournament. We qualified seven kids for the MN/USA folkstyle qualifier. We've got some good parent support, some good coaches and we've got some people who are buying into the program."
Bipes was able to secure a grant through MN/USA Wrestling that they give to help groups that are trying to get wrestling in an area that doesn't have it. With that money and money he hopes to get through fundraising, Bipes hopes to outfit the kids with better equipment and take the next step toward a junior varsity-type program.
The Proctor/Hermantown/Duluth Marshal co-op is where Bipes would like to end up.
"We are just trying to keep our nose clean, don't ruffle any feathers along the way and show the community this is something the kids need," said Bipes. "This is a sport we understand (people in the area) might not be familiar with, but if you give it a try we know you are going to like it."
The schools have been supportive and helped the club continue. Right now the club has kids from Proctor, Hermantown and Duluth. Bipes' goal is to be an official program with the co-op within four years.
"We need to go to that school board with all of our ducks in a row. We took a lot of notes from what Cloquet was able to do (going from a club team to a varsity team). We have to have all our financial backing ready so when you go to that school board and they say 'we can't afford to run another program', we can say we will run the program, we will pay for it, just let us have it."
Building bridges and righting a wrong
Unbelievably, less than a year after the first UMD article was published, the Minnesota-Duluth program is nearly at the same spot. Ever since the program was killed, the wrestling alumni have wanted to bring the program back. When former head coach Neil Ladsten was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame the alumni started to contact each other through Facebook -- the social networking Web site -- to get the word out on Ladsten's day. As more people got involved, the wheels started to turn. Conversations turned to bringing the program back.
The plan is ambitious. Not only do the alumni want to get UMD's program running again, they see the program as a beacon for the whole area and something that can give the youth in the area something to shoot for. UMD wrestling camps, putting together a Midlands-style tournament at the DECC in Duluth, and support for schools who want to get programs going in the future would all be things the alumni would want to someday see in place.
The athletes are in the area and more importantly in the state. There are coaches who have said they would want to be a part of the program. But in order to get there, three major hurdles stand in the way. One big one has been cleared.
Jerry Hoy wrestled for Apple Valley in the late 70s. For years he was the only wrestling inductee into the Bulldog Hall of Fame. He sat down with a friend of his.
"I was at (the donor's) house, "said Hoy, " and (the donor) came up to me and said 'I read article (the UMD article from earlier in the year) and said 'you go ahead and get that program going and don't worry about the money. Just get it going.' Normally you would just look at someone and tell them 'you don't know how much this costs', but if you knew this person you wouldn't even question it."
Hoy said the mystery donor is committed to getting the program started and supporting it early on, but would expect with fundraising to be slowly weaned off of being the major contributor to the program.
Unlike the first time around -- when raising enough money was not going to work -- this time it would be more feasible. The alumni are all established in their careers and are in a better place to generate the money needed to slowly take over the expenses.
"We would really have to be aggressive with fundraising," said former UMD wrestler Jim Paddock. "We have over three hundred alumni. We are all connected on Facebook now. I think they are committed. Most of these guys are in their fifties. Yhey have careers and they have means. These are things we didn't have twenty years ago. I know we could do it financially.
"(The donor) is not the kind of person to just give out money," said Hoy. "We are going to have to work for it. There is no set time limit, but (the donor) is going to want us to set up a steady flow of donations to wean (the donor) off of it or at least get it down to half or something."
The second major hurdle to cross will be to keep UMD in Title IX compliance. In order to add a men's program -- even one that is funded entirely outside of the University -- UMD would have to reduce the number of men's athletes or add a women's program. With the recent rise of the football program to national prominence and the success of the men's hockey team the last five years, it would be unlikely that the administration would want to take away spots from the men.
"We need a women's program to piggyback with us," said Hoy. "We need a women's coach to come in and lobby. If anybody knows of a passionate coach who wants to bring in a women's program, that would really help out. Ideally if a women's coach would approach the athletic director about getting a women's program going and plant that seed, then we can come along and say we would like to get the wrestling program back and we can pay for it ourselves. Then maybe (UMD) would say, 'Maybe this would work.'
"The one objection that we can't do a whole lot with is, 'We don't want you here. If there is still some bad blood up there, then we are dead in the water."
Hoy and Paddock are hopeful that the bad feelings that were generated the first time around will be gone with the exit of Martin.
"There is no one left up there from when it all went down," said Paddock. "They are all gone."
The time might be right. Although not a friend of wrestling, Martin and others in the administration have done a lot of good at the university. My family and I have been visiting our old school once a year for about five years ... and what the administration has done to the campus is impressive. To the naked eye it was sort of a drab campus fifteen years ago. Now improvements have been made all over campus. It is a campus to be proud of.
Although they might have been forced to do it, the UMD administration cleaned out everyone in the athletic department that was part of the corruption up there. Eventually almost all the programs have had success -- many at the national level. Included in those success stories are the two big revenue generating programs and the one the wrestlers helped create.
When the wrestling team was cut, the two biggest programs at the school were not doing well. The football team had its first losing season in years. After the program was cut, the football program quickly fell to the bottom of the conference. After a few coaching changes, athletic director Bob Neilson became the head coach. His program won the Division II national championship in 2008 and qualified for the tournament again last year. They made renovations to the football stadium to make it one of the best DII fields in the area.
The men's hockey team was in the bottom half of the WCHA standings regularly in the late-nineties. Since Scott Sandlin was hired the team has had its ups and downs, but has been in the NCAA tournament twice in the last five years and came within one or two wins last season of making it again. Next season they will be opening a new area on the waterfront.
The women's hockey team has won numerous championships and much of the credit for all the programs has to go to the people who are in charge now. They have turned the entire athletic department around. In doing that, the climate for bringing the program back is better than it has ever been.
The current UMD administration has proven they can turn around and run successful programs. In order to get wrestling back at UMD (and the area in general) people in the right places may just need a little push. If you want to help at any level, the people leading the charge gave us the following ways to get involved.
To contact the North Shore Wrestling Club or the students running the UMD club team, go to North Shore's Web site: www.north shorewrestlingclub.com. If you know of any old wrestling gear -- shoes, head gear, or even something like mat tape lying around, Bipes would love to take it off of your hands. If someone has a used wrestling mat you would like to sell or simply get it out of storage -- instead of throwing it away, Bipes would love to hear from you.
To contact the people involved in bringing the Minnesota-Duluth program back the best way to get involved is to join Facebook, look up and join the page originally set up by Jennissen, "Bring wrestling back to Duluth." It is free and a great way to get involved in the movement.
Hoy and Paddock will be meeting with administrators at UMD later this summer. The administration needs to know Minnesota is ready to have the program back. Listed at the end of this article is the contact information for the UMD athletic director and the members of the U of M Board of Regents. A great way to help would be to contact these people and let them know you support bringing the program back. The more positive feedback supporters of wrestling can give to the decision makers at the university, the easier it will make it for the movement.
"We just want to right a wrong, "said Paddock. "If UMD lets us do it, we get a program back and after a few years it is not working, then let it die. We can live with that. We just can't live with the way it was murdered."
UMD Athletic Director/Head Football Coach
Bob Nielson: rnielson@d.umn.edu
Members of the Board of Regents
Clyde E. Allen, Jr: allen190@umn.edu
Dallas Bohnsack: bohnsack@umn.edu
Linda A. Cohen: lacohen@umn.edu
David M. Larson: dmlarson@umn.edu
Anthony R. Baraga: no email listed
John Frobenius: froben@umn.edu
Steven D. Hunter: sdhunter@umn.edu
Maureen Ramirez: ramir015@umn.edu
Richard B. Beeson: rbeeson@umn.edu
Venora M. Hung: hung0025@umn.edu
Dean E. Johnson: djohns@umn.edu
Patricia S. Simmons: simmons@umn.edu
The Regent's Web site asks that any correspondence is sent also to the Executive Director and Corporate Secretary Ann D. Cieslak at cieslak@umn.edu.
Recommended Comments
There are no comments to display.
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now