A little late but still a powerful read: -------------------------------------- Because you arent going to stumble on collegiate wrestling when you flip on ESPN. High school boys arent talking about their fantasy wrestling teams and whos leading the league in pins. Even the Olympics nearly ditched wrestling — as much a part of the games as running — because it said the sport didnt have the fan base or ability to evolve with the times. You dont play wrestling, its most passionate advocates say. Its among the most physically and mentally grueling sports around, a metaphor for life, and its had to grapple with staying alive as Division I college varsity teams have faded into club-level sports. Syracuse dropped its varsity team in the early 2000s. Varsity programs went away at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Union College and the University at Albany. And Boston University wont host a varsity program again after this season. Obviously wrestlings a minor sport, and its tough. Its been a state of atrophy, says Frank Popolizio Jr., director of Journeymen Wrestling, which not only organizes events like the Northeast College Duals but offers a year-round youth club and sponsors clinics. Society has become slightly softer over the past 10, 15 years, so wrestling is extremely difficult. It demands incredible work ethic, incredible. A warm-up may be a three-mile run, and thats our warm-up, and then were going to go 21/2 hours of taxing your body to the highest degree. When you ask somebody to participate in that kind of environment, and theyre not accustomed to it, its very foreign. Popolizio says some of the troubles for collegiate wrestling can be pinned on unfortunate interpretations of Title IX, which some schools used as an excuse to cut mens wrestling in order to fund additional womens sports. And some of it has to do with what the International Olympic Committee said when it put wrestling up for potential elimination in the 2020 games. The sport just hasnt evolved. While thousands will pack an arena to watch a UFC match, between 1,500 and 1,700 fans will attend the Northeast Duals, which showcases some of the best college wrestlers in the country from teams such as Illinois, the University of Virginia and Lehigh. And so when some great competitors from Russia came to wrestle in one of Popolizios events earlier this month, he did a theatrical weigh-in, which mimicked the pageantry of UFC. At N.C. State, his brother Pat Popolizio, the wrestling coach there, has staged meets in conjunction with a womens gymnastics competition called Beauty and the Beast hoping to draw more fans. Despite struggling for a fan base and seeing Division I programs fade, the Capital Region has continued to produce a strong crop of wrestlers, in part because of Frank Popolizios efforts to showcase college wrestling and bring in jaw-dropping mentors like Cael Sanderson and Dan Gable to put on clinics. About a half-dozen former Capital Region standouts will return with their college programs to wrestle this weekend, including Gwiazdowski, who has set winning a national title as this years goal. The wrestling history here is strong, going back as far as the late Niskayuna native Jeff Blatnick, who took gold in the 1984 Olympics. He was discovered as a high school sophomore at Niskayuna by Joe Bena, whos been in the sport so long he also coached Gwiazdowski at Duanesburg, and is the one encouraging his wrestlers to attend the Northeast Duals on Saturday. Blatnick had no desire to wrestle, but Bena needed a big kid and talked him into giving it a try. Theres a certain mentality needed in wrestling, one that allows you to get put on your back but escape and keep competing. Blatnick discovered he had it. And wrestlings survival banks on other kids discovering that, too. jgish@timesunion • facebook JenniferGishwriter cbs6albany/sports/features/sports/stories/kelley-northeast-duals-field-1413.shtml?wap=0
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 02:04:08 +0000
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