Wrestling Blogs - Stephen Stonebraker

I read Rick Addante's recent blog about Eastern Illinois dropping wrestling and how he says, "Good Riddance". At first I was a little hurt by Addante's reaction to Eastern Illinois wrestling program being dropped, but then when I read into why he felt the way he did, I had a hard time arguing with him.

Truth to be known, when Arizona State Wrestling announced it was going to drop it's wrestling team, I took my $150 I make a week, gave $25 to my mom and had her write out a check to help fund the Sundevil wrestling program.

I didn't waste my time or my money on Oregon and I'll tell you why.

I love wrestling with all my heart. I wish that every school, and I mean every high school and every college in the United States of America had wrestling, but I get a little ticked off when I think about Oregon dropping it's wrestling pogram.

When Oregon announced it was dropping wrestling, I got right on the ball and contacted as many people as I could. I wanted to write an article for thewrestlingmall.com in an effort to help save the Ducks wrestling program.

I got a hold of members of the Save Oregon wrestling team and interviewed the one and only one that was willing to take the time to talk to me. You'd think that when someone who has the ability to make their story public comes to them, they'd jump all over it, but instead of wanting to make their story known to wrestling fans nationwide, they wanted to worry about the people in Eugene and Eugene only.

I thought that was a bit odd. I then interviewed the young lady who was heading the group and low and behold some guy came over and spilt his coffee all over my interview questions. I immediatly called her back and told her what had happened. She said to just email the questions to her and she'd answer them.

I did, on more than one occasion but I never got any answers back. I didn't think much of it, just figured she was busy and it was my own damn fault for being in a place where there was no computer and I had to write them down on a piece of paper instead.

I then called Coach Kearny and left a voice mail on his answering machine. He didnt' have the time of day to call me back or return my phone calls. I understood that. He's a busy man and I took professional consideration to how he was going through a tough time.

After my third call in three weeks, I finally decided that he obviously wasn't interested in a doing an article about saving Oregon Wrestling and I let it go.

Then a while later, there was an article up and running about Saving Oregon Wrestling. I contacted the writer about the article and he had just thought of it about a week and a half before it was posted. I asked him about the girl, and he said that not only her, but many of the members talked to him and helped him out a tremendous deal. He also said that Coach Kearny returned his phone calls within a day.

I dont' like the way I was treated at all. I don't like how I called Coach Kearny saying, "Hello Coach Kearny, my name is Stephen Stonebraker, I'm a writer for thewrestlingmall.com and I'd like to do an article about Saving Oregon Wrestling, if you could call me back at (my number) I'd sincerely appreciate it. Thank you very much for your time."

Here I am going out of my way, trying to help out a wrestling program with many wrestlers that I've been big fans of over the years including Jason Harless and Shaun Williams and I'm pretty much told in a very subtle way that I'm not wanted and I'm not needed to help?

Why is it that I'm on the ball about this, wanting to seriously help Oregon Wrestling the best way I know how to, and I get completly ignored while another guy who wasn't even aware that Oregon wrestling was being dropped, is told to get on the story by his higher up and gets a tremendous amount of credit for caring enough to write about a fantastic wrestling program being dropped?

It's like a drowing man, screaming for help but when you go to save him he screams even louder for you to go away and hits you severly when you try and save him.

I realize that not everyone is like that, but I don't apologize and I certainly dont' take any critisizm for being practically told to "F off" by Coach Kearny and others who wanted to save the Oregon Wrestling program when I too wanted to save the Oregon Wrestling program.

I guess I think with my heart not my head, and whether that's a good thing or not I don't know.

At the NCAA's this year I saw a booth for Save Oregon Wrestling and although I got a little bitter thinking of how I was treated, I went over their and put $20 that I didn't really have to put into the bucket and I spent another $10 on two Save Oregon Wrestling T-shirts. Not to mention I bought a hat 3 times too small for my head that read's, "Save Oregon Wrestling" for $5.

Is that a lot of $$ to be putting on The reinstatement of Oregon Wrestling, no it's not and I'm sure a lot of richer fans, will let me know how much more they've spent.

I hope with all my heart that Oregon wrestling gets reinstated. I just hope that if they do, they don't tell me to go screw myself, if I chose to cheer for them.