Taken Down & Pinned But Won't Quit.

The Boise State Wrestling program was cut last spring from the list of Division I sports BSU offers. With a roster size of 24 husky men it appeared that their collegiate careers wearing those blue and orange singlets was coming to a close. And man don't we all love men in singlets. Many of the guys transferred to new schools or graduated from college and moved on from their wrestling careers. However, a select few decided that transferring schools their senior season didn't make sense so they stayed in Boise to finish their degrees.

According to the History of Wrestling, "the first real traces of the development of wrestling date back to the times of the Sumerians, 5000 years ago." I don't know about you but I didn't know what Sumerians were so... Google helped me out (one love). Google states, "the name comes from Akkadian, the language of the north of Mesopotamia, and means "land of the civilized kings." If there are any wrestlers reading this, I know you just saw that this sort of refers to you as kings but let’s not let our heads get too big.

Now that I’ve walked you through a little history lesson, the real reason why I’m writing this is to give kudos to the guys who stuck around. Every day I walk past the wrestling room to get to the office I intern at. More often than not the remaining guys, roughly three or four of them and sometimes even the coach, are in the wrestling room working out. It looks like they go through drills and from what I can see, from my awkward quick glance, sweating profusely. These guys most likely won’t wrestle in a live match again yet they are still so passionate and dedicated to a sport that got taken away. I feel this shows the type of mentality a lot of wrestlers have and I think it speaks volumes about their character as well.

Even though these men got their sport taken away from them that doesn't stop them from doing what they love to do; wrestle. Now this isn’t a post fighting to bring the program back or trying to justify whether it was the right or wrong but simply one to shed light on the men who were dealt a crappy hand but are trying to make the best of it.

-iKarli