SCHULTZ, SMITH, KRAFT, DOLE TO BE INDUCTED INTO NATIONAL WRESTLING HALL OF FAME, SATURDAY, JUNE 7STILLWATER, Okla.- Three Olympic gold medalists and the coach who gave wrestling its premiere holiday tournament will be inducted as Distinguished Members of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame at the 21st Honors Banquet June 7, 1997.
Wrestlers in the Class of 1997 are:
* the late David L. Schultz, who won the World title in 1983 and the Olympic crown in 1984 and was considered one of the top ambassadors for the sport in the the world.
* John W. Smith, who had an unprecedented six-year reign of two Olympic golds and four World championships (1987-92), and was a star athlete and is now the current head coach at Oklahoma State.
* the late George S. Dole, who wrestled in the first collegiate dual meets for Yale University in 1903 and won an Olympic championship in 1908.
The coach/contributor is Ken Kraft, who coached Northwestern University for 22 years and also founded the Midlands Championships, the king of wrestling's open tournaments.
The Honors Weekend also will mark the induction of two Outstanding Americans - Dan Dierdorf of St. Louis, former professional football star and now a television commentator for ABC Monday Night Football and the late William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States.
The Medal of Courage will go to physically challenged wrestler Dock Kelly of North Carolina at Greensboro, a national tournament qualifier who has only one foot and one functional hand. The Order of Merit will be presented to Jim Scherr, executive director of USA Wrestling. Five scholar-athletes from across the country will be honored with the Dave Schultz Awards for High School Excellence, with the national winner being announced at the banquet.
Schultz attained the highest levels of achievement in wrestling, not because of overpowering physical skills but largely because he was one of the most intelligent wrestlers in the history of the sport. Schultz once told one of his mentors, "I cheated! I learned HOW to wrestle." And that he did.
Schultz was a National Collegiate champion for Oklahoma in 1982 and he won 10 national championships in the international styles - eight in freestyle and two in Greco-Roman. He won his first national title in Greco at the age of 17 and was voted the nation's outstanding freestyle wrestler four times.
A World champion in 1983 and an Olympic gold medalist in 1984, he also won three World silver medals and two bronzes. He won the 1984 Olympic berth in an epic battle with Hall of Famer Leroy Kemp, but yielded that spot to Kenny Monday during the next two Olympiads. Yet in 1993, he had returned to the No. 1 position. Schultz was training for the 1996 Olympic Trials when he was shot and killed in January, 1996.
Schultz, who by his own admission wasn't the greatest athlete in wrestling is the only American to win the legendary Tbilisi tournament twice, and he won five gold medals in the World Cup. He won the Pan American championship in Greco-Roman in 1977 and the freestyle gold 10 years later.
For all of his achievements on the mat, Schultz is best known as wrestling's greatest friend and the sport's greatest ambassador, across the nation and around the world. He always had time to talk, he always wore a smile. His sportsmanship transcended national boundaries. He was as popular with the "mortal enemies" of his country - notably the Soviet Union and Iran - as he was at home. He learned Russian so that he could communicate with other wrestlers, and he named his son Alexander after a friendly rival in the USSR.
In the words of his younger brother Mark, himself a World and Olympic champion and a Distinguished Member of the Hall of Fame:
"Dave was the greatest influence in my life. He made me who I am and taught me the most important lessons of life. He taught me humility, how to fight for myself, and what it means to be a man. Dave was an extraordinary gift to the entire world, and especially to me. He was the most honest and generous person I have ever met. He never hurt me with a lie. He is the most loved international ambassador for peace and friendship the wrestling world has ever known."
Smith is included in any discussion of who the greatest wrestler America ever has produced. Although that distinction is arguable, Smith's career record is not subject to argument. Partly because of opportunity, but primarily because of skill, it is beyond comparison. From 1986 through 1992, Smith won:
* Two Olympic gold medals. He was the first American to do so in 80 years, and unlike Goerge Mehnert's double (1904, 1908), both of Smith's golds came against the finest wrestlers in the world.
*Four World Championships. No other American has won more than three.
* Six consecutive world-class titles. No other American has won more than two in a row.
* Two gold medals in the Pan American Games, in two attempts.
* Two gold medals in the Goodwill Games, in two attempts.
* Five national freestyle championships, in five attempts.
* Two NCAA championships and 90 consecutive collegiate victories.
He became the first wrestler to be voted the James E. Sullivan Award as America's greatest athlete, the first American chosen Wrestler of the Year by the International Wrestling Federation (FILA), and the first U.S. wrestler to win the World Trophy, which he received in 1992. He was the United States Olympic Committee's Sportsman of the Year, a first for a wrestler. Smith retired from competition after the Barcelona Olympics and already has coached Oklahoma State to an NCAA team championship.
Smith's record in international competition was 100-5, and only one foreigner defeated him twice. His domestic freestyle record at the senior level is 77-3. Combined with his collegiate record of 154-7-2 and his high school totals of 105-5, he has competed 458 times for his school, club, or country and has won 436 times, for a winning percentage above 95 percent.
Dole, his twin brother Louis, and Hall of Famer George Mehnert were the dominant wrestlers of the first decade of the Twentieth Century. The Dole brothers were born in Michigan, grew up in Maine and enrolled together at Yale in 1902.During the following spring, responding to a challenge from Columbia University, Yale students formed the nation's first varsity wrestling team, which won all of its dual meets over the next five years.
The Dole twins were exactly the same size, so they always wrestled each other to see who could compete at their preferred weight, 125 pounds. The loser of these evenly contested matches went up or down a class. It is said they often switched assignments without anyone knowing the difference.
In 1905, students from four eastern universities formed an association to conduct the first intercollegiate championship tournament. The Doles, plus another lightweight named Alfred C. Gilbert, later a famous toymaker, swept the first three weights to assure YaleÕs team title. George continued to win this tournament in 1906-07-08, the latter two years as a graduate student, and became the first four- time champion. Louis lost in 1906 - at 145 pounds - but won three times.
A week after their 1907 sweep, the Dole twins entered the National AAU tournament in Newark, N.J. There George astonished the wrestling world by pinning Mehnert in 4:56 of the 125-pound finals. It was the only loss in eight years of national competition for Mehnert, who had been considered unbeatable. In 1908, Mehnert went down to 115 to win his seventh title, while Louis Dole won at 125 and George at 135.
The British organized the 1908 Olympic Games in London with only two lightweight classes, 119 and 133. Neither Dole could pull to the smaller weight, leaving it to Mehnert. George Dole won the challenge at 133 and followed Mehnert to a gold medal, the first ever for a collegiate wrestler. They were the first two U. S. wrestlers to win Olympics which were attended by other countries. MehnertÕs 1904 title came in an all-American Olympiad at the St. Louis W