LITTLE ROCK — The reactions from around the Arkansas wrestling community were predictable when news broke last week that wrestling had been dropped from the 2020 Olympics.
“Shocking,” Springdale Har-Ber Coach Nika West said.
“Stunned,” Little Rock Catholic Coach Paul Mammarelli said.
Said Pat Smith, a coach at the Arkansas Wrestling Academy: “I felt like someone kicked me right in the gut.”
The International Olympic Committee voted Feb. 12 to not include wrestling as one of the event’s core sports starting with the 2020 Games. For wrestling to be included after the 2016 games in Brazil, it will have to convince the IOC of its worth.
If not, the sport’s premier event will be gone, and the end goal for those participating in its introductory levels will change dramatically.
It was a tough realization for Smith, a former four-time NCAA champion at Oklahoma State who has spent the past six years helping the sport gain footing in Arkansas.
Today, he and the Arkansas Wrestling Association will help the Arkansas Activities Association put on the fifth high school state wrestling tournament at the Jack Stephens Center in Little Rock.
Forty-four schools split into two classes are entered in the tournament which begins at 1 p.m. The finals are scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Saturday for the culmination of a high school season that has included 990 wrestlers, the state’s highest number.
The lasting effect of the IOC’s decision, if upheld, at the sport’s lowest levels is varied.
The number of wrestlers have increased every year since the AAA sanctioned the sport in 2008, said Greg Hatcher, the president of the Arkansas Wrestling Association, and the number of youth clubs operating statewide is around 35.
Smith and Hatcher don’t think it will mean much. With or without wrestling in the Olympics every four years, they expect growth in Arkansas to continue.
High school coaches across the state, they both say, don’t preach Olympic dreams during workouts or meets. Fourteen wrestlers make up the U.S. Olympic team - seven in freestyle and seven in Greco-Roman - so the reality of that goal is slim.
Goals at that level are more micro. When coaching his youth and high-school aged wrestlers at his wrestling academy, Smith discusses fundamentals that could lead to youth and high school state titles. If a wrestler gets to that point, the next step is a college scholarship.
Rarely is wrestling in the Olympics discussed.
“Who knows if you can ever compete at the world level?” Smith said. “That’s a long process. ... I don’t think we’ll see the participation level drop in the U.S.. There are 100,000 people that wrestle in this country, and there’s 14 [Olympic] spots.”
Mammarelli said he isn’t so sure, though.
He wonders that, if the IOC doesn’t accept wrestling’s application to be included as an additional sport in May, it could eventually affect the sport on the collegiate level.That, he said, could affect the sport at the high school level, and it could lead some who wrestle at a younger age to take up different sports when they reach high school.
“Here in Arkansas, we finally have turned that corner,” Mammarelli said. “This would absolutely hurt that.”
Last summer, many on West’s team gathered around a laptop at Har-Ber to watch Jordan Burroughs and Jake Varner win gold medals for the U.S ..
“If you’re a wrestler,” Little Rock Central Coach Shawn Hickey said, “you imagine winning the gold medal.”
Hatcher, Smith and the state’s coaches are pushing the sport’s progress in Arkansas. And that continues this weekend.
“It’s very disappointing, [but] the sport is going to go on,” Smith said. “We’ve come a long way in five years. Our first year, we’re throwing head locks left and right. Now we look like college wrestlers.”
State high school wrestling tournament
WHEN Today-Saturday WHERE Jack Stephens Center, Little Rock
SCHEDULE Championship first round begins at 1 p.m. today, followed by championship quarterfinal round and consolation first and second rounds. Championship semifinals begin at 9 a.m. Saturday, followed by consolation quarterfinals and semifinals. Championship and consolation finals begin at 3:30 p.m.
ADMISSION Daily pass $8, children younger than 5 free
Sports, Pages 17 on 02/22/2013