Eastern Oregon University announced Monday it will re-establish wrestling as one of the school’s intercollegiate sports.
Funding for the program includes a $300,000 allocation from the Oregon State Legislature as a result of efforts by state Rep. Greg Smith (R-Heppner).
“Eastern Oregon is home to many wrestling champions both on individual and team levels,” said Rep. Greg Smith. “EOU is unable to attract these athletes who desire to continue wrestling in college. I believe wrestling will give EOU another tool for recruitment and help keep our youth in Eastern Oregon.”
Dr. Mike Clock, chair of the Restore College Wrestling Oregon Committee, noted that over the past 17 years, nearly 55 percent of the high school team state titles have been won by schools east of the Cascades.
“Since the late ‘70s, there have been no geographically convenient opportunities for those young individuals to compete at the college level in Oregon,” he said.
Smith worked with leadership and a group called Restore College Wrestling during the 2015 legislative session to find funding to reactivate a wrestling program at Eastern Oregon University, which is Eastern Oregon’s only university. He serves as co-vice chair of the Joint Ways and Means Committee and is a member of the Joint Ways and Means Subcommittee on Capital Construction, which helps appropriate resources throughout the state. Rep. Smith is also an avid supporter of wrestling programs throughout Eastern Oregon and the father of two-time state champion, Ryan Smith.
Eastern Oregon’s move comes eight years after the University of Oregon’s decision in 2007 to replace wrestling with baseball, which led to the formation of Save Oregon Wrestling, a group committed to restoring the sport at UO.
According to an Oct. 13 report in the Oregonian newspaper, leaders of the effort to restore UO wrestling were “shocked” to learn that the university is requiring a $75 million endowment to bring back the sport. That money would pay for what the university says would be the annual cost of offering wrestling, plus another sport to equalize the school’s offerings for men and women under Title IX.
Other sports added to the Ducks’ intercollegiate line-up in recent years are acrobatics and tumbling, and women’s lacrosse, neither of which are contested at the high school level in Oregon to any great extent. UO’s tumbling team signed five athletes, two from Oregon, last fall for the 2016-17 season. Girls lacrosse is played in 16 Oregon high schools, all of them 5A Division or larger, under the auspices of the Oregon Girls Lacrosse Association. The boys sport is played in just under 50 Oregon high schools under the auspices of the Oregon High School Lacrosse Association, only two of those 4A Division or lower.
“I feel with the reinstatement of wrestling at Eastern Oregon University, this will further strengthen regional programs and give more Oregonians access to competing in the sport they love,” said Richard Rockwell, head coach at Riverside High School in Boardman. “Eastern Oregon high school wrestlers have needed a college wrestling program for years.”