**MONUMENTAL FRAT WARNING**
Ok, first, you gotta understand what CU was like when I went there ('95-'99).
It's still not a big school, but it was way smaller then. Maybe a few thousand students on main campus and that's it. You could definitely find high schools in metropolitan areas that were bigger. And probably 85% or more of the students went home on the weekend lol (by 230-3pm Friday afternoon, the place was a ghost town, lmao). The only ones of us that didn't go home on the weekend were the ones that either were from out of state or the Malaysian exchange students. lol
The campus was small, too - you could walk from one end to the other in about 10-12 minutes (and that's if you were going to the *extreme* ends). The campus was really all there was, too. Yeah, CU has an address of "Buies Creek", but all Buies Creek was at the time was CU, two gas stations, a church, a barbershop, a bank, and an apartment complex for students. That was it.
There was a gated golf course community across the street and down the road where a bunch of CU staff / higher ups lived. A smaller town was about a 5-7 minute drive one way, and another, slightly larger town about 10-12 minutes the opposite way.
The county had a small sherrif's station on campus, but it was really only manned 9-to-5. The rest of the time was rent-a-cop on a golf cart as "public safety". Nothing like a hospital, full-time (around the clock) staff of any kind, etc.
The administration (which I had extended family in at the highest levels...though he & I were not close and wasn't the reason I ended up going there) really didn't care much about athletics. They cared hugely for their law & pharmacy schools (both well-known), the divinity school (because, at least at the time, they got a ton of donation from the Baptist State Convention), and their Trust Mgmt program (one of only three undergrad programs in the country at the time).
They wouldn't admit it, but sports as a whole were a distant second. They did like to embrace the fairly new Golf Mgmt program, simply because it tied into the business school.
All that said, even with what resources & attention sports *did* get, wrestling was ALWAYS low man on the totem pole. They got the least money, least time, worst facilities, etc. CU liked to put their attention into basketball (this was long before they had a football team) mainly, and basketball players got the best treatment. After that, it was track, soccer, baseball & tennis, then probably softball. After that it was probably intramurals, dorm leagues, and guys playing pickup ball in the courtyard.
Wrestling came somewhere after all that. lol
I mean, to give you an idea, the team themselves would have to haul the mats into the gym for tournaments. The wrestling room was a disused building at the edge of campus (I'll come back to that) with no amenities. They by far had the least across the board.
The school didn't have an S&C coach really at the time (for any sport). The guy that ran operations was the "Strength Coach", but didn't know what he was doing. Nothing against him - he was a great dude. But he was an ops guy - not an S&C guy. He'd print out some workouts for other teams, including wrestling, but they always just kinda did their own thing.
Crazy thing is even then, CU typically had a pretty good wrestling team. Even if the team as a whole wasn't great, there were always 1-3 standouts every year. And by "standouts", I mean nationally ranked (even though most of the school was NAIA & not NCAA), if not going the season undefeated, then only 1-3 losses all season, going far in the tournament, etc.
Wrestling by far had the most successful athletes (at least individually) of any sport at CU at the time, but the program also by far was given the least shit about across the board.
To say they were the "red-headed stepchild" of the school's athletic program...when they already didn't put a huge emphasis on sports already...is an understatement. And even then, there were ALWAYS multiple badasses on the team every year.
Shit went REALLY bad in fall of my sophomore year, though.
Billy Saylor was, as I remember, one of the top 3 high school wrestling prospects in the country and had came to CU. I didn't know him, but he lived in my dorm and I had a class with him.
He wrestled 190 (again, as I remember) and was cutting weight either for the first match of the year or a pre-season scrimmage.
Remember when I said the wrestling room was a disused building with no amenities? It was literally just that - a building at the edge of campus with electricity. No running water, no bathroom, no ice machines, no nothing. Heat (IIRC), but no A/C. Just wall-to-wall mats and lights.
Guys from the team would regularly go in after hours (it wasn't hard to get into) to run, drill, and in general, do ALL the insanely dangerous things guys looking to drop weight do. He was trying to cut something he was probably used to, but still a fuck-ton (like 10-15lbs, maybe? I don't remember exactly.)
He was in there with another guy or two on the team and the assistant coach (who was a grad student).
And it was WELL after hours...like 2-3am.
Between extreme heat in the room, wearing a bag, severe dehydration & more, Saylor passes out. They can't get him to come to & realize he's having a heart attack.
They're on the edge of campus, which isn't far from anything...but because it's not, everyone has walked there. There are no facilities in the building. No full-time staff on campus. No nearby medical help. This is LONG before cell phones were a thing. There was a nearby buzzer thing to get public safety, but nobody realized until it was too late that it wasn't working.
The assistant coach tried to give him CPR & revive him, but by the time another wrestler ran home (it's late AF, nobody is awake, nor is anything open) to call 911 & EMS got there, it was too late. Saylor was dead.
RIP
(If any of you guys are as old as I am, you might remember the year in the late '90s where three wrestlers all died in one year due to complications from extreme weight-cutting - Billy was one of them.)
As you might expect, all hell broke loose. And the wrestling coaching staff were made the scapegoats.
Billy & the other guys there shouldn't have been there, but at the same time, they weren't doing anything that hadn't been done countless times in the past, either. That said, the university was still at fault for providing them such SHITTY facilities (how TF are you gonna have your WRESTLING team full-time use a facility that didn't have running water, an ice machine, a fully stock cooler, etc). The public safety call not working was another huge thing. But the wrestling coaches got blamed.
Especially the assistant coach, since he was there. And it really wasn't his fault.
60 Minutes, ABC News, or one of those did a special on all the wrestlers that died that year, and the assistant coach (who was *maybe* 23-24 years old) got interviewed. I knew him a little and he seemed like a good dude. But, like a lot of wrestlers, not the brightest guy when it comes to "professional" type stuff. The interviewers hit him with gotcha questions & made him look not only stupid, but at fault, on national tv. I remember watching it, thinking was horseshit it was.
Both the coach & assistant coach got canned. I heard through the grapevine that CU paid off the head coach to get rid of him, but dunno if that's true. The assistant coach definitely got thrown under the bus by CU. I felt bad for him. He either transferred or quit school the next semester (all this happened in the fall).
After that, they brought in a guy named Dave Auble to be head coach. He was a former Olympian & a bit older...mid 50s, maybe? Didn't matter, though - the dude could GO. He not only hung with, but as I understand, usually out-wrestled everyone on the tream (even the SHW...which is saying something since Auble competed at (I think?) 123 & at the time was maybe 145-150.
CU still had a couple great wrestlers after that. One guy that was a freshman the next year was Billy Greene. I was an RA in the dorm for two years, and he was in one of my suites his freshman year. He was one of the guys that would only lose 1-2x a season. Not at all your "typical" wrestler, either - didn't drink, party, etc. I don't think he even cussed. lmao. Always studied his ass off, went to church, etc. Dude was a BEAST on the mat. IIRC, he wrestled through graduate school, then came back a couple years later to be head wrestling coach.
I'm not sure how long Auble lasted...I think he was there until Greene came back. There might've been someone else in the meantime. The team did Ok under him while I was still there. He was an outstanding wrestler, but I'm not sure how great of a coach he was...at least for that team.
The school not having an S&C program didn't help them. I'd worked in operations via student work-study all four years of undergrad. Started off checking IDs at the gym & weight room, then up to running events, prepping fields, etc. Says something about how much they put into the wrestling program that I was running the entire setup, teardown, etc for wrestling tournies by myself as junior in college (i.e. - no actual CU ops staff running the show).
My senior year, a bunch of guys on the team started getting hurt. I was pretty big at the time, had a bunch of experience running events, knew everyone on the team, & Coach Auble liked me. He admitted he didn't really know anything about S&C and asked if I'd start designing programs for the team. Obviously, I jumped at the chance. It was actually my first foray into athlete-specific training (not just strength work & basic cardio), which helped me a ton a few years later when I started putting together S&C programs for MMAists & BJJers in the early days of the UFC.
After graduating, I talked to Billy a time or two and would hear rumormill. While the school was growing (upper-level administration had changed by this point, & more $$$ was finally being funneled into sports), the wrestling program, compared to everything else, was still getting the short end of the stick. They still found awesome success & had their standouts, though.
So it's no surprise now to see how good of a team they've become. I dunno WTF they've done there, and how they've continually convinced some of the best talent in the country to come to Buttfuck, NC for the last 30+ years or more. But they have.
It's also no suprise to see they're cutting scholarships, even though you can bet your ass their wrestling team has the most accomplished (especially nationally) athletes in the whole school. You can also bet your ass they give the wrestling team barely a fraction of what they spend on the football team.
It was that way when I was there and been that way since. It's just not as bad as it once was.
