HISTORY LESSON NEEDED
Youngsters must be reminded of those who set tone
Anyone who had the good fortune to attend both the Midwest Classic in Kearney, Neb., March 25-26, and the Cliff Keen Reno World of Wrestling Championships, April 1-3, would have a hard time believing that wrestling isn’t one of the nation’s most popular and successful sports.
I was at both events, representing the International Wrestling Institute and Museum of Newton, Iowa. My wife, Bev, and I drove to Kearney to run our museum booth and to sell gift shop items. The tournament is held annually in the beautiful arena on the University of Nebraska at Kearney (UNK) campus.
Marc Bauer, the youthful and enthusiastic head coach at UNK, hosts the tournament and does a wonderful job of making everyone feel welcome. He is obviously a hard worker, taking his Kearney team to sixth place this past March in the NCAA Division II nationals and then a few weeks later running a terrific tournament for youth wrestlers in Nebraska and surrounding states.
Bev and I enjoyed Marc’s hospitality and the event tremendously and then drove to Fort Collins, Colo., to visit our two daughters, who live there. Bev returned to Newton to run the museum while I drove the van to Reno, Nev., to participate in the legendary Reno World Championships.
The Reno tournament is run by Jack Roller, the same hard-working promoter who makes the Tulsa Nationals one of the most successful shows in the country. I had heard for years what a super tournament Reno is, but I still was not prepared for such an exciting weekend.
Kyle Klingman, the museum’s associate director, flew in to Reno to help me run the booth there and we were shocked by the size of the crowd at the Thursday afternoon weigh-ins. We had never seen such a huge turnout.
Jack asked me to be the keynote speaker at the kickoff banquet Thursday night and it was a real treat to talk to so many enthusiastic coaches and workers. I told the group that there are, in my opinion, three main keys to wrestling’s success on all of the levels in this country:
The strength of the grass roots, keeping young athletes (and their parents) involved;
Proper support in the media, creating ongoing interest and excitement;
Selling the sport to the masses in order to increase the number of people who care about the sport.
There are, of course, many more “keys” but these are the three main ones, from my point of view.
One of the best ways to do number three is to build a historical base to draw upon. Since our sport relies heavily upon scholastic programs, we need to show educators the value of the sport, both through the lessons it teaches about life itself and through the history lessons it offers.
I give speeches all around the country and I always stress the historical nature of our sport … because it is totally unrivaled by any other sport. Period.
The Reno audience heard me say that the oldest piece of extant literature in the world is “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” which tells the story of the king of Sumer (Gilgamesh) who engages in a wrestling match. Sumer existed 5,000 years ago … in the very same spot we now call Iraq. Talk about historical perspective!
Then there is the story of Jacob wrestling the angel of the Lord in the Bible and the story of the wrestling matches in The Iliad, of Homer. I told the audience that Achilles, the greatest warrior who ever lived, played by Brad Pitt in the movie “Troy,” was a wrestler.
Of course, I never miss an opportunity to tell everyone that Abraham Lincoln, continually ranked as the top president in American history, was a fine backwoods style wrestler. My booklet, The Sport of Lincoln, tells the true story of his epic match with Jack Armstrong in the little pioneer village of New Salem, Ill., in 1831.
I wound up by saying we can sell the sport to educators at all levels by informing them of the sport’s dynamic history.
Over the next several days, dozens of coaches and fans came by the museum’s booth to ask if we had a book with all that information in it. When I said, “No, not yet,” they were disappointed.
“We need a book like that to help sell our principals and other teachers on the importance of the sport,” they said. “You need to write all of this information down in book form so that we can use it in classes and to promote wrestling.”
And they are right! Wrestling does need such a book. So I will make that a top priority and hope to have it available during the 2005-06 wrestling season … or by the time of the NCAA Championships, for sure.
It will be called Mankind’s Oldest Sport: The History of Wrestling. Look for it some time next season.
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