Real March Madness

Real March Madness for me is the NCAA college wrestling tournament. It's held about the same time each year as the NCAA basketball tournament. But for some people like me it's much better. Just a matter of preference of course.

Ever since I was a student at Penn State from 1958 through 1962 I was fascinated by their varsity wrestling teams. Our main stud on the Penn State wrestling teams was a guy by the name of Ron Pifer. Pifer was a flashy wrestler who was a good pinner. He was to win All American honors at the hallowed NCAA wrestling tournament which seemed to always be conducted "out west somewhere". "Out west somehwere" was usually in wrestling country; that being Oklahoma or Iowa or someplace nearby. While I was growing up in Pittsburgh, Pitt was coached by three time NCAA titleist Rex Peery, from Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) and up until the time he retired he had a number of champions who hailed from the Pittsburgh area, but the Nittany Lions never had an NCAA champ when I was attendng there.

I always wondered why, Pifer, our big star, could only finish fourth, second and third in his three trips to the Nationals, when Ron was so darned good, and became fascinated with the whole concept of the NCAA Wrestling Tournament. And why eastern wrestlers never did as well as western wrestlers.

Actually, as the internet became such a useful information tool I found out that in reality, as opposed to my late 1950's impressions, that the NCAA tournament was actually held as much back east as it was out west. But western wrestlers always seemed to do much better than eastern wrestlers.

This fascination with the NCAA Wrestling Tournament went into abeyance for a while after I graduated from Penn State and started working and met my lovely wife and started a family.

Of course everyone had heard just a bit about the fabulous Dan Hodge, from Oklahoma University, who never lost a match in college in his three years of varsity competition and furthermore was never even taken down from a standing position in his entire college career. And of course all wrestling fans knew that Oklahoma State had won many more tournaments than any other team up to the time when I was at Penn State.

Adding to the mystique of the NCAA wrestling tournment was the fact that Penn State, Pitt, Lehigh or any of the good eastern wrestling teams never, at least in the late 1950's, wrestled the Oklahomas, Oklahoma States or Iowa States back then. Probably because of travel difficulties and expenses that more severe, on a relative basis, than they are now.

But then Dan Gable came along, with his incredible work ethic and his great pinning ability, to really start putting college and later free style wrestling on the map of national sports consciousness and soon everyone who knows wrestling became aware of what Dan did at Iowa State and later in the 1972 Olympic Games.

At that point in time I really began to want to see what the national wrestling scene was all about. It took a few years, but in 1978 the NCAA Wrestling championship came to Cole Field House at the University of Maryland, a distance of 30 miles from my house in the western Baltimore, MD suburbs. So off I went to get tickets to the big event. I got tickets for the big event's semi finals and finals. The semis had too much action for a tyro like myself to keep track of what was was going on but I did learn later that a match that was wrestled during the semifinals was one one in which the great Dave Scultz, then a true freshman at Oklahoma State, almost pinned, in what would have been the upset of the tournament, the great junior wrestler from Michigan, Mark Churella, who would go on to become a three time NCAA champ. Churella beat Shultz that night 13-11 but was in danger of being pinned at the conclusion of the second period of their match and was in trouble again just at the conclusion of the exciting match.

The finals though, occurred on Saturday night, and as each pair of wrestlers at the ten weight classes squared off, there was palpable electricity in the air. Especially when Churella flattened a very good Iowa wrestler, Bruce Kinseth with a spectacular split scissors move. (Kinseth would pin his way through the following years tournament and become that tournament's outstanding wrestler while Churella moved up two weight classes to win his third national championship). This was followed by the great Lee Kemp winning his third straight national championship against a real good Iowa State wrestler, Kelly Ward. (Kemp came close to being the first four time NCAA champion losing only to Iowa's Chuck Yagla in Kemp's freshman year in overtime by referee's criteria).

But what really mad this night so great for a sports fan enjoying his first NCAA Wrestling Championship was the fact that Dan Gable won the first of his NCAA team championships as the Iowa Hawkeyes edged out the Iowa State Cyclones by 1/2 a point. This was the start of nine straight NCAA team wrestling titles for Gable's Hawkeyes.

Great fare indeed for a wrestling fan to witness on his first trip to collegiate sports Real March Madness. :)