Morrisville State College will be discontinuing its sponsorship of men’s wrestling as an intercollegiate sport effective the 2011-2012 academic year, according to Greg Carroll, the college’s director of athletics. 

Carroll said the decision to drop wrestling came after careful consideration of all aspects of the sport’s place within the colleges’ National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III Department. “We have seen a general decline in the popularity of wrestling at the high school level, and as a result colleges at all levels have been forced to look at the sport’s place in their own programs,” he said. 

“Many of those schools who were traditional rivals of Morrisville State in years past have discontinued their programs and we have found it difficult to transition the sport to the four-year level,” Carroll said. 

Since Morrisville State’s main conference affiliation does not sponsor wrestling (North Eastern Athletic Conference), the Mustangs were a member of the Empire Collegiate Wrestling Conference along with RIT, Brockport, Cortland, Oneonta, Ithaca, Lycoming, and Messiah College. 

Morrisville State will continue to offer football, soccer, cross country, ice hockey, basketball and lacrosse for men at the intercollegiate level, fielding a total of 15 sports for the athletics program