College Wrestling: Fresno State wrestling coach ponders future

Copyright InterMat Wrestling Published at www.intermatwrestle.com June 16, 2006

Just over a year ago, there was a national search underway to find a successor for Dennis DeLiddo.

After 24 years as the head wrestling coach at Fresno State, DeLiddo announced his retirement. Several qualified coaches were brought in to interview for the position including current Cornell College head coach Mike Duroe, current American University head coach Mark Cody and then-Nebraska assistant Shawn Charles.

The job eventually went to Charles, named the head coach on July 1, 2005.

With no time to recruit and a new system to put in place, Charles and his assistants, Kevin Lake and Travis Pascoe sucked it up and gritted through a 4-12 season and focused on recruiting for the future.

The net result, 22 incoming recruits with dozens upon dozens of state medals, a pair of senior national All-Americans and an incoming recruiting class ranked 15th in the nation by InterMat.

The full potential of the recruiting class will never be realized, at least, not at Fresno State.

Less than a year later, Charles is out of a job as Fresno State announced it was cutting the wrestling program and supplanting it with men’s cross country in a move to save an estimated $400,000 from the debt-ridden athletics budget and ease concerns from Title IX gender equity issues.

“It’s very shocking, to everyone and myself,” said Charles in an interview with InteMat on Thursday.

“I like Fresno, I like Fresno State,” said Charles. “What I believed in Fresno State is what I had my recruits believing in -- to reach their goals and become a national champion.”

That belief is nothing more than an apparition, at least right now.

“We (the coaching staff) don’t have a job and my recruits and wrestlers on the team don’t have a place to go out and wrestle,” said Charles.

The decision doesn’t just impact the 22 incoming athletes and the 16 returning wrestlers on the Bulldogs roster. It has a larger impact.

California has over 728 (according to the National Federation of High Schools handbook) schools sponsoring high school wrestling in a one-class system. Finding a spot in the state tournament is sometimes a battle to win 13-14 matches just to qualify. The talent level is high.

With roughly 23,000 high school wrestlers in the state of California, the opportunity to wrestle at a college within their home state had dwindled even more.

“Here in the Central Valley, wrestling is very popular,” said Charles. “That’s why there’s such a big outcry of the dropping of the program. There are a lot of wrestlers in Clovis and the Central Valley. State champions are right down the street.”

“A lot of California kids want to stay in California. Now they’re going to be forced to leave the area and two, possibly have to leave the state,” said Charles.

Popular in the state on the high school level, the state only has now six NCAA-level wrestling programs: Stanford, UC Davis, Cal State-Fullerton, Cal-State-Bakersfield, and Cal Poly in Division I and San Francisco State in Division II. Menlo College competes in the NAIA and Lassen competes in the NJCAA.

Charles is left wondering why. Why would Fresno State spend all the time and effort to search nationally for a coach if they were going to cut the program?

“That’s been going through my head a lot,” said Charles. “I’m still getting over the shock of the program being shocked the way it was.”

Reason six listed in the school’s release (http://www.fresnostatenews.com/2006/06/wrestling%20cut.htm) notes that “Wrestling is not a broad-based NCAA championship sport.”

It also states: “As of September 1, 2005, there were 87 NCAA Division I wrestling programs. This represents roughly 27 percent of the NCAA Division I membership. On the same date there were 303 NCAA Division I men’s cross country programs.”

That statement directly contradicts Fresno State’s own athletics mission statement.

A search of the California State University, Fresno web site notes the following as the mission of its Department of Athletics.

The Department of Athletics complements the academic mission of the University by offering students an athletic experience of high quality through broad-based, competitive sports programs for both men and women. To provide such an experience, the department is committed to integrity and excellence in both athletics and academics through a comprehensive academic support system.

Something to ponder.

* * *

But Shawn Charles now has to ponder his future.

“I moved out to California, purchased a home, I bought into the environment,” he said. “I started these different activities to build a foundation for the future. Myself and my assistant coaches worked our butts off recruiting and building and all our work has been thrown out the window.”

And the recruits?

“A lot of them are stuck. It’s June 15 and there were a whole bunch of jobs that opened up two months ago,” Charles said. “Two months ago these kids had chances to go to different programs. Right now, people are on vacations and scholarship money has been handed out so now you got kids that had opportunities early that chose to come to Fresno State and now their stuck.”

The wrestling team’s APR (Academic Progress Rate) and GPA were also referenced as a reason. Charles had little control over the academics of his wrestlers before arriving, but he immediately took steps to change it.

“I know we were moving in the right direction,” Charles said. “The GPA of the kids coming in was over a 3.0. The bottom line is I took it on the chin this year. I made the changes and corrections that needed to be made, they affected our dual meet record but they were there to ensure the longevity of the program.”

“We did this all because we knew we were building that we were going to be better. They took away the opportunity for us to be great late,” he said.

Charles said academics were a major point that was addressed upon his hiring.

“We immediately got here and had a modified academic game plan,” Charles said. “The wrestlers met with coaches once a week, mandatory study hall for anyone under a 2.5, for anyone, senior or not.”

Charles said the chance was “slim to none” about the chance for the program to be saved according to his conversation with AD Thomas Boeh.

That’s not going to stop the Central Valley wrestling fans. Within a day of the announcement, noted wrestling photographer and web designer Danielle Hobeika got http://www.savefresnowrestling.com up and running.

E-mails are circulating and posts on message boards are growing.

“There’s been a lot of phone calls and a lot of boosters are coming together to try to stop the dropping of the program,” said Charles. “Basically it’s been a lot of people affected by this. The culture of central California is very big in wrestling.”

“I know the alumni and the boosters are getting together. The community is rallying. It’s my first time in this situation; I don’t know what the outcome is or what the outcome will be. I know right now we don’t have Fresno State wrestling.”

Other reasons noted for the elimination of wrestling were, as Charles put it, “excuses.” Of them, “lack of a dedicated practice facility, locker room and cost-efficient and reasonable competitive venue.”

“We signed 22 kids to come here. They weren’t walking around with blinders on,” Charles said. “The kids were ok with it, they bought into it. The lack of having a locker room isn’t going to make you a national champion or All-American.”

And the venue?

“Fresno’s been wrestling in the place for years, it was quite suitable for wrestling,” Charles said. “Are any of things great? No. but to still be able to recruit that many good kids, they have to see those things weren’t needed to accomplish their goals.”

Charles admits that for a school like Fresno State, the all-sport affiliation with the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) is important. Fresno State was set to join the Western Wrestling Conference, a wrestling-specific conference similar to the Eastern Wrestling League.

“The conference thing is a big deal, it is an issue, but again, the kids coming into the program know that and were still ok with it,” said Charles. “The only thing that I can really honestly say is that I came out here and I wanted to be the head coach at Fresno State is that I could recruit kids at Fresno State and turn it into a powerhouse wrestling program.”

“In the short time I was here, I did recruit good kids. It was just taken away,” said Charles.

“You can’t recruit kids that want to come here if they don’t see they can’t accomplish their goals and dreams. The potential for success is here. I don’t know if the administration sees it the way I do,” said Charles.

“Obviously they don’t,” he said.

That still leaves Charles searching for options.

“I’m in the same situation as my student athletes,” he said. “I’m hanging out in the wind. Great deal of jobs that opened up and for me and my coaching staff, we did a great job recruiting, we were comfortable at Fresno State, never got any inclination that the program was in jeopardy.”

“Right now, I don’t have a job being a wrestling coach,” said Charles. “I’m disappointed that if this was the process they were going to do, they should have given myself, my staff and my recruits, and shown us enough respect to let us be in a position to go elsewhere. All these jobs have opened and closed, it’s just really disappointing.”

Charles, if he elects to stay, will have his contract honored next year, as will the scholarships of the wrestlers that are currently on the team and those high school athletes that have signed scholarships with Fresno State.

“I have no animosity towards Fresno State or Thomas Boeh, but I understand he has to do a job and make the budget balance,” said Charles. “What I don’t understand is that the things that were thrown out there, with some heads up, the community, boosters and alumni and we could have knocked down all five of those points and worked it out so the rest of it would work out for the Athletic Department.”