NCAA'S SUPERMEN
Santana among those who overcame injuries to win
The warriors of wrestling will soon be converging on Oklahoma City for the latest version of the NCAA Division I Championships. Athletes from every corner of the country have been working since November with their eyes on the primary goal: winning the national title in their weight class.
You have to be a great athlete to be a national champion in college wrestling, at any level. That’s a given. But some times, you have to be lucky, as well. Primarily, you have to be able to get to and through the tournament without suffering a crippling or debilitating injury.
Injuries are the biggest hurdle an athlete faces at this stage of the season. With nearly five months of practice room sessions and grueling matches behind them, the wrestlers who climb onto the top stand on the platform have not only earned that spot through hard work and trial by fire, they have also managed to avoid a serious injury along the way.
Having attended 35 NCAA tournaments, I have seen my share of upsets and shocking results. But I have also seen an incredible amount of courage displayed by athletes who simply would not surrender to the extreme pain and injuries.
Perhaps the single most momentous injury I ever saw in the Nationals came in 1978 when Iowa and Iowa State were battling tooth and nail for the team title. The Hawkeyes wou
nd up winning the crown by the margin of one half point — 94.5 to 94 — over the Cyclones. It turned out to be the first championship for a young coach named Dan Gable, the first of nine in a row!The meet was held at the University of Maryland and the outcome wasn’t determined until the 190-pound match. The Cyclones looked to be in great position with their defending NCAA champion Frank Santana going up against a tough Wisconsin wrestler named Ron Jeidy. They had met several times over the previous two years and Santana, an extremely powerful and poised competitor, had won them all.
“I couldn’t have drawn it up any better,” said Santana recently. “It’s what you dream of as a kid. You’re in the national finals and the team race is on the line. I’m facing a guy I respect but feel can’t really score on me.”
They were early in the second period when Frank heard the terrible sound.
“I tore the ACL in my right knee,” he said. “It just snapped. The referee said he heard it pop. My knee was incapacitated; I couldn’t put any weight on it. Sure, there was pain, but that wasn’t the main thing. The knee immediately swelled up and I could hardly move.”
Still, Santana struggled valiantly to wrestle. I was sitting in press row and I can remember the crowd seemed stunned, watching this tough, gusty Cyclone captain trying to compete for both himself and his team. But Dr. Harold Nichols, ISU’s legendary head coach, knew the battle was over.
“I wasn’t going to stop for anything,” said Frank. “Then I saw the towel come flying in over my shoulder. Nick had literally thrown in the towel.”
Santana protested strongly to his coach, but Nichols just shook his head sadly and put his arm around Santana as they left the mat. The moment was etched in my mind for many years, as I suspect it was for many fans that were there. Frank remembers it as though it was last week.
“One of the big lessons from that tournament is that wrestling is a team sport,” said Frank. “We had three men in the finals (Mike Land, who won at 126, and Kelly Ward, who was second at 158), and so we had three shots at winning. But if we had won just one more match in the wrestlebacks, we would have been national champions. It’s important for today’s wrestlers to understand how important the wrestlebacks really are.”
Santana never wrestled competitively again. He embarked upon a very successful business career and now owns and operates a tremendous facility in Des Moines called Seven Flags Fitness Center.
“I had nine or ten operations on my left knee and then this happened to the right knee,” he said. “That was it for me.”
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