NWCA Call To Action

To: Wrestling Community
Fr: Mike Moyer, Executive Director
Re: Protecting College Wrestling 

As many of you know, it is the time of the year when many intercollegiate Olympic sports are vulnerable to being discontinued on campuses across America.  Just over the past two weeks, the following three intercollegiate wrestling programs were dropped: 

* University of Nebraska at Omaha:  Just won its 6th NCAA D-II Championship over the past 8 years.  UNO is moving from D-II status to D-I status and wants to invest more resources into basketball. 

* University of North Carolina at Greensboro:  Just advanced 4 wrestlers to the NCAA D-I Championships. Administration wants to make a bigger investment into D-I basketball. 

* University of Sioux Falls:  School is migrating from NAIA to D-II and believe their wrestling program is not funded sufficiently to be competitive in their new conference. 

Please know that the NWCA is aggressively pursuing strategies to save these teams. Concurrently, we are also deploying an innovative “student-fee referendum” strategy in California in an effort to reinstate two programs (Cal Davis and Fresno State) that have been discontinued and save two other programs (Bakersfield and Fullerton) in jeopardy of being dropped (see preserve California Wrestling Document).  We are making great progress in California and developments over the next 4 weeks will be critical to our ultimate success. 

Simply stated, none of our intercollegiate programs are eternally safe!   Further, there are plenty of “areas” (i.e. institutional conference affiliation, Title IX compliance, etc.) that we have little or no control over that can doom a program so it is more important than ever that we maintain good control over the “areas” (i.e. academic success, community service, social responsibility, relationship with administrators, alumni relations, maintaining healthy roster numbers, fundraising, etc.) that we do have control over.

In the interim, attached are two “Calls to Action” that need your immediate attention.  Please review them at your convenience and be sure to follow up as requested.  Thank you for your prompt attention to this request.      

Sincerely, Mike Moyer

Call to Action for UNO and UNC-Greensboro