Syracuse tucked away its wrestling mats more than a year ago. You’d think a lot of people would have it tougher now that the sport is gone.

Gene Mills, a longtime assistant coach, lost the team he’d cheered for all his life. Scott Miller, the head coach, lost his job.

Truth is, it’s a bit easier now. For three years, the hundreds of people who’d fallen in love with Syracuse wrestling and its 79-year history lived with their stomachs churning. They’d crunch numbers and then hope. Crunch numbers and then worry.

Then they’d watch. Not because they wanted to, but because they had to. You don’t turn your back on what you’ve loved so long just because it’s hard to look. So they watched the kids in the Syracuse singlets lose and watched the coach cry and the administration do nothing. They watched Title IX take their program.

The worst months were those that followed January 1997, when Director of Athletics Jake Crouthamel informed the wrestling team that its days were numbered.

As the months crawled along, the pain dulled. The anger did too. But the memories still haunt those closest to the program. With no team to watch this year and no singlets to follow, memories of good times and bad fill the void.

***

Great programs should go out with parades and celebration. Syracuse wrestling went with a whisper. That’s what made it all so unbearable for Mills, an assistant for 16 years in the 1980s and 90s. He knew Syracuse as a perennial top-15 program, one with an All-State-caliber wrestler at each weight class.

Even in January of 1997, Mills had one of those teams. He coached more than 25 wrestlers, many of whom had helped Syracuse place fourth of 16 teams in the EIWAs the previous year.

But that afternoon, just after Christmas break, no Syracuse wrestler showed very much toughness. Fresh off a meeting with Crouthamel, Mills and 30-year head coach Ed Carlin walked into the wrestling room with tears in their eyes. The two coaches, rough and hardened wrestling guys, told their team that Syracuse wrestling would cease to exist shortly down the road.

“That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life,” Mills says. “When you have 25 or 30 college guys that are looked up to as studs, then they are dropped to their knees crying. Oh my God, it was devastating. Nobody could believe it.”

***

Mills doesn’t blame Title IX for his loss. Sure, Syracuse cut its men’s wrestling and gymnastics teams and added women’s soccer, lacrosse and softball to meet Title IX regulations. But Mills argues that the spirit of Title IX — a 1972 federal legislation mandating athletic funding for men’s and women’s sports reflect the gender ratio of the school’s student body — wasn’t intended to cut men’s Olympic sports.

Mills thought he’d been screwed. He thought hundreds of SU wrestling alumni had been too. Most of all, he thought Syracuse had pulled a fast one on his 14-year-old nephew — the one that cherished his Syracuse wrestling shirt — and all the other kids who dreamed of wrestling for Syracuse.

No, Mills and all the wrestlers he’d coached weren’t going down without a fight. They’d grown accustomed to having their backs on the floor.

Say what you want about wrestling, but few sports spark so much unity. If you wrestled at Syracuse, you go to reunions every year and talk with your buddies every week on the phone. Syracuse grappling is a life-long fraternity — and Mills knows it.

So, along with a large contingency of former SU wrestlers, Mills participated in a group called “Keep Syracuse Wrestling.” By Mills’ count, the program raised over $250,000 in hopes of saving the program before its eventual demise.

But this time, the opponent wasn’t a 165-pound college kid with a bulging upper body. Mills and his wrestling buddies were matched against Syracuse University, a financial juggernaut that had already made up its mind. “Keep Syracuse Wrestling” never got its back off the mat.

***

Crouthamel will tell you that cutting Syracuse wrestling was “damn hard.” Janet Kittell, Associate Director of Athletics, didn’t want to lose it either.

“It’s devastating to lose any program, and we would keep every sport if possible,” Kittell said in March of 2001. “If the checkbook were huge, the wrestling team would still be in existence.”

As tough as it may have been for Crouthamel and Kittell to swing the ax, they didn’t have to watch every day as the final Syracuse team suffered.

In its last year, the wrestling program shrank to a skeleton of its former self. Miller, who never swayed in his genuine enthusiasm, coached six wrestlers. They didn’t win a dual match. They didn’t win a match at EIWAs, finishing last.

When Harold Jean-Louis fell to the mat at the EIWAs at the Palestra in Philadelphia, Miller’s eyes welled up. Jean-Louis’ match would be the last for Syracuse. Miller couldn’t bear to think about what Syracuse was losing.

“I could build this into a top-25 program,” Miller said at the time. “You look at the impact this program has had on thousands of lives, and it is never going to have that impact again. We let go of important things like that too easily.”

***

Nobody associated with Syracuse wrestling let go easily. True to the nature of their sport, they fought and clawed and screamed and cried before Syracuse took their program away.

“The last years were so hard, so heartbreaking,” Mills says. “It’s kind of easier now. Life goes so fast that it is hard to take the time to sit back and think about it everyday. It’s not something I want to think about.”

He doesn’t always have a choice. Mills still gets calls from young wrestlers wondering if Syracuse will bring its program back. He doesn’t know what to tell them. He’d like to stammer a quick “I hope so,” but he cares more than that.

“I just don’t know what to say,” Mills says. “Plenty of little kids own 20 Syracuse wrestling shirts and want to wrestle here. Their dream has died. I tell those kids who call that hopefully someday Syracuse will get it back so that all those kids won’t have to be broken like I’m broken.”

Mills works toward that goal. He hopes to use some “Keep Syracuse Wrestling” money to start a club team here next year. It’s the best he can do.

“Syracuse wrestling was my life for so long,” Mills says. “It was a part of so many lives. It’s a little easier since it happened a while ago now. But it still hurts. It still hurts like hell.”

And, it probably always will.

Published on April 24, 2002 at 12:00 pm