Everyone who has been posting on this topic and has expressed an interest in getting involved in the effort, please read Sean McCarthy's announcement of our first group meeting. The details can be found in the Breaking News Section of the Home Page.

Also if you are already in the process of writing petition letters to the various parties listed, please mail the letters as Sean suggests and send Sean a copy at the address provided. Yesterday I read this advice on writing a Congressman on themat.com and I think it would be applicable for the Chancellor or Athletic Department too. This advide is from Lawrence Rudner, Director of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation:

"Your letter should go to your Senator or Representative and should be no longer than one page: two brief paragraphs are best. Identify yourself, your affiliation, and your major concern in the first paragraph. You should describe why the concern is important and worthwhile in the second paragraph. End with your postal address. Keep it concise!"

There will be a follow up meeting June 4th to the May 14th meeting for those interested in bringing Division I wrestling to a college in Kansas - the follow up meeting will be at the Freestyle/Greco State Tournament in Junction City. Bring your suggestions and comments on paper. I will pass a petition around to get signatures.

Coach McCarthy

What time you plan on starting the meeting? I will be coming in from an All Night event at Relay for Life the Night before in Ottowa County.

The May 14th Meeting will be from 1:00 pm to about 3:30 or 4:00. Burgers, Brats, and stuff served at 1:00. Meeting should start around 2:00.
The June 4th stuff at the State Greco/Freestyle I am hoping starts immediately after weigh-ins and during the pairings. I so happy for your good news and keep up the fight.

Sean McCarthy

I think we need to propose DI wrestling at not just one select school but make it a priority of getting it established at any DI school willing to bite. We need to raise the money first as technically we don't have entitlement to that money signed because it will basically go covering facility improvements and budegtary issues for the college as it stands right now not only in athletics, but for the entire campus!

We need to show proof that we can support a program financially, not just when a handout is present. I'm all for DI in Kansas wrestling, but let's even look on the broader spectrum...how many guys are we keeping in state for DII (FHSU) or NAIA (Newman)? We lose more guys # wise to out of state schools in those divisions. Maybe we should start adding more DIIs and NAIA programs 1st to get the "big dawgs" attention.

We could use some help posting our support of a KU Men and Women's wrestling team on the Lawrence Journal World Message Board. Go to the following:
http://boards.kusports.com/

You will find the wrestling at KU topic in the Other Sports forum. To contribute you will need to register and that may take a little bit of time. It did for me. I must have done something incorrect though because Mike Furches seemed to have no trouble getting on.

You will find the discussion has been mainly favorable for wrestling. This is a response I gave to someone who said no that KU should be adding swimming and diving first.

"There definitely needs to be a NCAA Wrestling Division I team at KU. Wrestling ranks fifth in Kansas for boys high school participation, at 4,762 participants, behind 1)football, 2) basketball, 3)track & field and 4)baseball (baseball had 5,688 participants) but ahead of next (6) golf, (7) soccer, (8) Cross Country, (9) Tennis (10) Swimming and diving. I like to see all the sports have a team at KU but wrestling with these participation levels and a youth wrestling club level that is one of the top ones in the country clearing deserves a chance before tennis and swimming/diving. A state university should be representative of it state's residents. The Big 12 Wrestling Conference is one of the most dominant conferences in the nation, even though it is only at 5 of the 12 conference schools. All five teams make it a habit to finish in the Nation's top ten teams every year. Kansas surrounded by Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri and Oklahomea is in the heart of the nation's wrestling country. Kansas has had three NCAA Division I finalists in the last two years and a champion two years ago. Of course they have been forced to wrestle NCAA Division I out of state. Yes, Kansas once had a wrestling team and even an Olympic gold medal winner. Unfortunately our great wrestlers today like 2004 NCAA Division I Champion Zach Roberson are forced to wrestle out of State today like Zach did at Iowa State."

Again I encourage you to go to this site. There is a topic in the BASKETBALL FORUM of this site called something like "Rainy Day Fund" which refers to an article on the site that talks about all the extra money that Perkins has brought in and what to do with it.

Several of the people on this basketball site are actually suggesting wrestling but some are suggesting soccer. I think it is very important for all of you to get on this site to try to get the KU basketball fans to support our cause. If anyone has some pull with the AD it would be them.

http://boards.kusports.com/

Just made some comments on both threads and encourage others to do the same. I was actually surprised at the support wrestling is getting on the basketball thread. Posting on threads like these get others outside of our community to start thinking, and thus possibly supporting our efforts here.

On a side note, Vince how did you get 13 posts there so quickly? You have 3 stars and I am still a baby jay.

Mike:

Yeah I see I have more stars than some guys who have over 1000 posts on that site. I didn't even notice that until you mentioned it. I don't know what the stars mean or what determines the number that a poster has. I have posted on the Other Sports forum on your topic, the Basketball forum and the Track and Field forum of that site. Mike, thanks for referring us to that site.

You may not have seen it but I also introduced a topic on the Basketball forum that is titled something like "Time to Remember KU's Honored Sports History." I opened the topic up with the story about KU's Olympic Gold Medalist from the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. If anyone is unaware of that story, go to the topic on that forum and read the story. It is a good one about our lad from Kinsley. There were a couple positive responses to it. The topic has not received a lot of response, but Mike maybe you can add a comment to it. It might earn you some stars.

Good luck at the Junction City meeting this weekend. I will be at my daughter's track meet in Kansas City. Sean McCarthy will be there. I hope we recruit some new group members. I think there is an opportunity at KU if we seize it. Carpe Diem (Seize the Day)!

Going by 2004-2005 rosters for DI Schools here are some that I found with # of Kansas preps that went on to these universities in brackets. I'm not counting out of staters that came to a juco in the state to wrestle and then left at this time, only the true Kansas kids:

*I don't know everyone in Kansas wrestling,so help me out and check to see if I ommitted anyone...I'm only taking those that were officially on rosters from websites at this time as they would include redshirts and such.*

Pac 10 (4)
Big XII (10)
Big 10 (1)
Air Force (2)
Appalachian St (1)
Edinboro (1)
N. Iowa (1)
Navy (1)
Ohio (1)
N. Colorado (1)
S. Dakota St (1)

If you all can think of any that were on team just from last season that would be great.

Oh got another set of statistics that might be intriguing to some. Even with a DII and an NAIA program in Kansas last year, 4 year colleges from the NAIA and DII wrestling schools from the neighboring states took a total of 33 Kansas Preps! This doesn't even start to include someone who may have come to Kansas to wrestle Juco and then transferred out...these are Kansas High School alumns!

If you add the DI guys that left to the neighboring state you get 12 more for a total of 45! There are only 10 varsity spots on a wrestling team in college, so if you look at it in terms of bodies, Kansas could field almost 5 teams just on talent that left the state, which coincidentally is the same number of total men's programs you get in KS when you include the NJCAA schools!

Swayz, no doubt that we have the talent base. Can you imagine all the prospects in three years that will come out of this year's Freshman class?

I do hope that more of you will log on to the KU Sports.com website and post on the active topics that I have mentioned in this thread. I really think this is a website that the KU Athletic Department pays attention to, especially the Basketball Forum section. I think it would be good to get a lot of wrestling support on that topic in the Basketball Forum about what to do with the Rainy Day fund. Wrestling has received some support but they are coming strong for soccer too.

http://boards.kusports.com/

Don't mean to sound dumb here but do the title IX numbers count the participants or the "scholarship" participants?

In an effort to clean-up several posts which were off subject, they were deleted. The posts regarding Equestrian at K.S.U. were deleted as they have no bearing on this topic.

My intent in deleting the posts and purging the topic was simple. Many individuals do not read long posts or topics. I was attempting to form the topic along the lines of the topic heading.

If I offended Aaron, Mike, or Vince, I do apologize.

Okay, I was posting and have just seen your apology. I appreciate that very much. Richard, you do a lot of good things for the wrestling community with your work on the Board, your posting of information, your moderating and I would bet many other things that I am just not aware of. I personally thank you for all of that. It is just that sometimes I wish you were a little more tolerant of some people on the forum. We may not agree with you but most of us are honestly just trying to be helpful to Kansas wrestling in some way. I know you are too.

My wife is constantly telling me that my posts are too long. Guess what, she won't read them for that reason. But that is her right. Mike Furches would need to start paring down too!

I guess as a forum if we want to limit the length of post we could limit the number of words. I have seen a forum that does. Of course all you have to do is post again.

Gotta have a moderator to stem the tide of flotsam. Richard does a bang up job. Actually there is a very large # of horsy riders in the KC area that attend KU. It seems that encouraging a riding program might be a backdoor way to get Wrestling added. It might be painful for some to do this, but we have to look at the big picture and not just our immediate knee jerk feelings.

Going to watch a polo match and riding are two different things. I'm sure those Johnson County brats just like being in attendance.

NMHU made a simular move by adding women's rodeo and wrestling.