Pictured: View from inside the Rutgers Athletic Center (The RAC) on the campus of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. Image courtesy of Rutgers assistant coach Joe Pollard's Twitter Page (@JoePollard1) ahead of the 2020 Big Ten Championships) in March 2020.
The 2021 Senior World Championships are right around the corner in Oslo, Norway, early next month. And, yes, the U23 World Championships aren't far behind in Belgrade, Serbia, in early November. That said, as the calendar approaches October, the attention of the wrestling community switches to Folkstyle for high school and NCAA wrestling.
That transition was on full display this week. The prominent headlines in wrestling media included: FloWrestling's Who's Number One in Dallas, Texas; the Penn State wrestling schedule was released; plus a bombshell coming out of Evanston, Illinois, and Northwestern regarding the anticipated firing of Andrew Howe (Associate Head Coach) and Jimmy Kennedy (Assistant Coach) for not getting the COVID-19 vaccine by October 1, per university requirements.
Due to that pending firing, Northwestern lost its top recruit in the 'Cats Class of 2021, Carter Young, a three-time OSSAA state champion with a 124-5 overall record. Most recently, Young also stormed to a third-place finish at 61-kg at the Senior World Team Trials in Lincoln, Nebraska, earlier this month to earn a spot on the Senior-level National Team for the USA. While in the Cornhusker State, Young took out two former NCAA champions to finish third and was the story of The Trials.
Without Kennedy, Young's primary college coach, a former three-time All-American and former U.S. World Team member on staff at NU, Young decided to transfer home to Stillwater to wrestle for John Smith and the Oklahoma State Cowboys.
https://twitter.com/MatScoutWillie/status/1439400329959911426
"One of the main reasons I went there was because of them, too," Young said in an interview with the News-Press earlier this week. "I was training with Jimmy Kennedy every day and was going extra with him. … So ultimately it was like, 'Might as well come home.'"
https://twitter.com/StwNewsPress/status/1440051174065905664
Northwestern, too, is in a tough spot as a talented Wildcat squad that placed 10th in the 2021 team race, its highest placement since 2014, may have only its head coach, Matt Storniolo, on the coaching staff heading into the upcoming season.
Transfer decision and pending firings aside, this saga brings to light one inevitable truth regarding the upcoming 2021-22 college wrestling season.
That truth is that getting through an entire college season is anything but certain.
Here's why: Differing university vaccination policies.
One fact that has come out of the Northwestern/Carter Young situation is that conferences are divided on their institution's respective vaccination policies.
In the Big Ten for instance, nine schools currently require students, student-athletes, coaches, and all university personnel to vaccinate (Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, and Rutgers).
However, the other five schools currently do not require vaccination to be on campus (Iowa, Nebraska, Penn State, Purdue, and Wisconsin).
The other six conferences to offer Division I wrestling (ACC, Big 12, EIWA, MAC, Pac-12, and SoCon) also lack uniformity within their conferences among member institutions regarding vaccination requirements or lack thereof to be on campus.
For simplicity's sake, let's discuss the Big Ten because it has been the article's focus thus far. As mentioned above, within the conference, the conference is divided into nine requiring vaccination and five not requiring a vaccination. With that, the obvious question comes to mind: Are administrators at a vaccine-required school (i.e. Northwestern) going to let their athletes wrestle with other student-athletes or schools (i.e. Iowa) who may not be vaccinated? The answer is likely a big no.
Iowa is slated to wrestle at Northwestern on January 14, 2022.
As you can see by looking at the newly-released 2021-22 Big Ten wrestling schedule, this exact question could arise a week earlier in the conference opener. Gable Steveson and the Minnesota Golden Gophers (vaccination currently required) travel to Carver-Hawkeye to take on Spencer Lee and the Iowa Hawkeyes (vaccination not presently required) on Friday, January 7.
Also, the 2022 Big Ten Championships are hosted by the Nebraska Cornhuskers March 5-6 in Lincoln. Suppose individual school policies stay as they are now. In that case, you have to wonder if the nine vaccine-required institutions feel comfortable traveling to such a campus/venue and then competing on the mat against other potentially unvaccinated athletes?
Larger multi-team multi-conferences Opens and holiday tournaments like Midlands, Journeymen's National Duals, and others further complicate this issues as well.
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Now, it's worth mentioning that we are still six weeks away from in-person dual meets and more than four months away from the start of conference duals. A lot can change before then.
It is fun to bask in the excitement of schedules releases, college practices getting underway, and all the excess preseason fodder currently making its way through the social media stratosphere. Still, it's essential to acknowledge that some genuine legal, logistical, and institution-specific hurdles will need to be addressed and rectified to achieve an entire NCAA season.
Additionally, as was the case last year in 2021, there could be (and likely will be) outbreaks and other virus spikes that will inevitably occur during the season regardless of the different vaccination policies. That is just a reality of the world we live in today.
It will certainly be interesting to watch the season unfold in the months to come.
Still, many unanswered and pressing questions loom for administrators across the country heading into the 2021-22 wrestling season.
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