Since 1989, the NCAA Wrestling Division I Championship has awarded 22 team titles. But only three schools have been crowned champion.
The dominance of Iowa, Minnesota and Oklahoma State in the past two decades has quelled any possibility of parity in the sport, which features 81 Division I programs. The distinction between the top tier of athletic competition and all those beneath it is nowhere else more glaring than in college wrestling.
“There’s definitely the imbalance of power in all Division I sports,” Terrapin wrestling coach Kerry McCoy said. “And in wrestling, it’s really evident.”
In the 83-year history of the national championship, which kicks off today in Philadelphia, only 11 schools have won team titles. Given the upper echelon’s sustained dominance of the sport, finding a place among the nation’s elite has proved no easy task. But an eventual ascendance to the sport’s upper rung is something that a handful of programs, including the Terps, believe they will one day attain.
“Those programs, and the history, tradition and support that they have — that’s why they’ve been successful,” McCoy said. “Every day, we get up and look for ways for our team to be competitive on the national level and compete with those programs. That’s our goal here; you got to have something to shoot for. … We’re trying to get to that level.”
The extra support and resources afforded to the nation’s elite programs are in many cases the defining factor of their consistent levels of success, McCoy said. With fewer than 100 programs across Division I, programs with the most administrative, academic and financial support naturally have the best chance at excelling.
That’s not to say teams like the Terps won’t ever be able to compete at a high level. The team has finished in the top 25 at the national championship each of the past three seasons, and McCoy said the playing field is as level as it has been in a long time.
“Individually, I think that this is as much competition as we’ve seen any year,” McCoy said. “You’ve got teams from every conference, every area, big schools, small schools that legitimately have shots to become All-Americans. So that brings the parity.”
Even with the stranglehold the Hawkeyes, Golden Gophers and Cowboys have had on the sport for the past quarter-century, parity nationwide has been on the rise, according to experts. An increase in information available to recruits has begun to change the shape of the college landscape, with recruits now better able to research coaches and wrestling styles, as well as academics and other factors. The added transparency has created a more balanced distribution of the top recruits, who no longer have to pick a school with the best pedigree to garner national recognition.
“Recruits are becoming more sophisticated about the college wrestling atmosphere and what choices they have,” said T.R. Foley, a staff writer for wrestling website InterMat. “I think parity has absolutely increased over the past couple years.”
And with the influx of talent at many schools not traditionally considered to be among the sport’s blue bloods, Foley believes the wrestling community could see a change at the national championships as soon as this weekend.
“The national champion, this year, will not be from Iowa, Oklahoma State or Minnesota,” Foley said. “In my opinion, the headlines after this are going to be about Cornell or Penn State winning the national title. I think parity, as we have seen it — with just three schools having concentrated talents for the past couple of years — is going to go past.”
The Terps, in particular, should benefit from the increased balance across the sport. With six wrestlers competing this weekend — 141-pound Jon Kohler, 157-pound Kyle John, 165-pound Josh Asper, 174-pound Mike Letts, 184-pound Corey Peltier and heavyweight Spencer Myers — Foley thinks the Terps, who lost three All-Americans to graduation last year, have a legitimate shot at improving upon their 20th-place finish in 2010.
“As long as they keep accessing good talent,” Foley said, “they’re going to be a very successful program. This year, I wouldn’t be shocked if they were in the top 15.”
Even with parity scarce across Division I wrestling for the past 22 seasons, the dominance of the elite programs could be coming to an end this weekend. The potential for a new champion and a top-15 finish has only emboldened McCoy’s belief that the Terps will one day stand atop the national championship podium.
“That’s why I’m here,” McCoy said. “I came to Maryland for an opportunity to compete for a national championship, and I think the program that we have right now, with the level of commitment we have from our athletes and the guys coming in, I think we can. Within the next few years, that’s our goal: to challenge for a national championship.”
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