The_Historian

Heavyweights Bill Closson of Lehigh and Jason Gleasman of Syracuse wrestled 14 times between 1994 and 1998. I believe that is a record.

There was no Dellinger text, I baked that cake from scratch. Once I get out of the hospital (today I hope) serious work can start on the second edition. It will update thru 2013 and be available only for the Kindle, iBooks, etc.

Because of my continuing and mounting health problems, I will not be able to provide any future updates to wrestlingstats.com. I am looking for someone to provide backup, but it requires certain skills and my own specialized knowledge of the databases. I do not have the energy to devote to a search.

Wittenberg was the best American wrestler of the first half of the 20th century. He might have won three gold medals if there were Olympics in 1940 and 1944. He was far ahead of his time in using weight training and wrote the book on Isometrics.

Cruz is very tall for 133 and will be building himself into a 141 pounder for the 2014-15 season after a red shirt year.

I am dealing with Stage IV cancer. For the last 18 months I have gone through a variety of difficult treatments, which included chemo, radiation, and surgery. The cancer is gone from the original sites of stomach and esophagus, but I have three small lesions on my liver. Regular chemo is keeping the cancer at bay, but the major side effect is almost continuous fatigue. I have lost 50 pounds since my surgery, but I had it to lose. The situation has been difficult, but it can be dealt with. In two weeks I will be making my first trip in a long time when I attend Hall of Fame Honors Weekend in Stillwater. BTW, I have written just one book. I do publish an annual update which can be downloaded from my site. I missed last year, but will very soon have an update available through 2013. I hope that a second edition of the book will be published in an electronic only format (Kindle, iPad, etc.) I will be discussing that with the HOF while in Stillwater.

I had looked into adding these, but my health issues have limited what I have been able to do in the last 18 months. Unfortunately, I have not had enough energy to even keep the existing data current.

The Worlds were in San Diego in 1979. It was a great venue, too bad no beach wrestling back then. The worst site might have been New Delhi back in 1967.

For the first time since 1957 there will be pigtail bouts in the EIWA. Both 1956 and 1957 had 18 teams participating in the tournament.

Division I wrestling is unique in NCAA competition in terms of how few schools have won the team title - just 10 officially. I noticed ice hockey, which started in 1948 and is a regional sport, just crowned its 20 different school as champion. Wrestling is the second oldest sport in terms of team titles, yet much newer sports like soccer, lacrosse, etc. have had more different schools as champs. Moreover, I believe that Oklahoma State and Iowa are one and two in the list of schools with the most team titles for a single sport. Swimming and Diving, which started a few years after wrestling, has had nearly double the number of schools win a team title. Like wrestling it has both individual and team championships. An interesting fact is that far few schools have won individual titles in swimming than in wrestling - a strange contrast to that for the team title.

Perry and Hamlin are from PA....since when? I guess Hamlin since he wrestled at LEhigh, but Perry.... Hamlin is called the Vermonster because he is from Vermont.

Yikes JCG how can you make this mistake, we were sitting together at '36 tournament. Oklahoma won it with 14 points.

The tie in 1933 was unofficial since there was no team scoring. Both Oklahoma State and Iowa State had three champs. A committee in the 1950's decided on an official tie. In 1978 Iowa beat Iowa State by a 1/2 point. That is closest as we have ever gotten to a tie.

In terms of champions, this year's tournament was very much on form. Six #1s and 4 #2s won titles. In only 1988 and 1979 were the champs limited to the one or two seed, with a 7-3 breakdown.

At the 1971 NCAA tournament Schalles lost to top seeded 158-pounder Bruce Trammel of Ohio University in the quarter-finals for his only career loss in NCAA tournament competition. Trammel was upset in the next round, eliminating Schalles from the tournament. Schalles was eligible to wrestle in the regular season in 1974, but he could not participate in NCAA tournament. The circumstances were straight out of Kafka. Because Schalles had not wrestled as a freshman he had lost a year of NCAA tournament eligibility. However, he could not wrestle as a freshman, because the ECAC, which controlled regular season competition, deemed him a transfer. Years later Schalles regretted that he did not take the matter to court. Nevertheless, Schalles loved to compete and he went out in a blaze of glory. He moved up two weight classes and pinned Floyd Hitchcock of Bloomsburg in the 177-pound final of the Pennsylvania State Conference tournament. Hitchcock went on to win an NCAA title at Ames and was named the Outstanding Wrestler. Above paragraphs from the feature on Schalles in my book.