Pinning down the future

The Portland State wrestling squad is made up of 26 wrestlers. They share $50,000 in scholarship money, enough for two full-time scholarships.

For the past six years the team has competed in the Pacific-10 Conference, which features other schools—Stanford, Arizona State, Boise State and Oregon State among them—that have fully funded their wrestling teams.

It is a luxury that the Portland State program has never had, according to assistant coach Charlie Lucas.

“We have to decide if we are going to split that as many ways we can or just trying to get two really good wrestlers and basically be a team built around two people,” said Lucas, who was an All-American wrestler at Portland State in the early ’80s.

Portland State President Wim Wiewel has organized a task force to look at the Vikings wrestling program after the team has struggled to compete against stronger competition.

The task force, composed of athletic director Torre Chisholm, Vice Provost for Student Affairs Jackie Balzer and several other faculty and students, is looking at the options of increasing funding for the wrestling team, continuing the program as is or disbanding the program completely, as the University of Oregon did two years ago.

The group will meet together several times before giving a recommendation to Wiewel on Feb. 16, but will hold two public forums this week, the first on Feb. 4 at 5:30 p.m. in the Smith Memorial Student Union Ballroom.

“Looking at it right now, we’re noncompetitive at the Division I level,” Chisholm said as a reason to look at cutting the program.

Compared with football and other sports at Portland State, the wrestling program has just a fraction of the scholarship money available and, according to Lucas, the program is the most underfunded of any in the conference and at the school.

The university may have concerns about the wrestling team’s success off the mat as well.

Chisholm cited academic concerns as something that the group would consider before submitting their proposal to Wiewel.

According to Chisholm, the squad has had multiple years of penalties for being below the mark in the Academic Progress Report, an academic report that is issued on each school and sport at the Division I level.

“Progressing penalties—and this is the big fear—could result in a decertification for our program,” Chisholm said.

The wrestling program has not had any academic issues for at least one year and during fall term the wrestlers had the highest GPA of any sport on campus, Lucas said. 

Lucas also said that the coaching transition from former head coach Marlin Grahn to current head coach Mike Haluska in 2006 caused a slight academic lull as several of the wrestlers transferred, dropped out or became apathetic about their academic performance.

All of those factors could negatively affect the APR rating that the squad receives.

Monique Peterson, chief of staff for ASPSU, is the student representative on the task force and wanted to ensure that the group would not take the job lightly.

“Right now we are in the information gathering part of the process,” said Peterson, who admitted that she knew little of the NCAA rules that could affect the decision.

Peterson said that the group has met a couple of times and that she is working hard on keeping an open dialogue with members of the wrestling team as well as other students to ensure that the students voice is heard.

After seeing the University of Oregon disband their wrestling team in 2007 and considering the success that the Portland State wrestling program has had—three national titles over the past 40 years—Lucas said he hopes that the group and the president will see that, with proper funding, the team can be not only competitive but successful.

“We have great facilities here, and a natural pipeline of recruiting talent from local community colleges,” Lucas said. “But it’s tough to get kids to come here when we may only be able to promise them help with their textbooks.”