Oklahoma State Cowboys wrestling
Encyclopedia
The Oklahoma State Cowboys wrestling team is a NCAA
Division I wrestling
program and is one of five Big 12 Conference
schools which participate in wrestling. Since the team's first season in 1914-15, it has won thirty-four team national championships
(three which are unofficial), 133 individual NCAA championships, and 213 wrestlers have earned All-America
n honors 423 times. The Cowboys won the first official NCAA Division I Wrestling Team Championship in 1929. The Cowboys have won 42 conference team championships and 232 individual conference titles. The program owns an all-time dual record of 1000-113-23. On January 28th 2011 OSU became only the 2nd school in NCAA history to record one thousand duel Victories, joining Iowa State University.
would take over the team. He coached the first national championship team in 1929. He was also the coach of eight of the first nine national champion teams as his teams won in 1929, 1930, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1938, 1939, and 1940. Only a strong 1936 Oklahoma team coached by Paul Keen kept him from sweeping the first 9 official NCAA Championships. He coached 50 official All-Americans and 26 official individual champions in the earliest days of the tournament. Following his death in 1940, the school had to find a coach who could continue their winning tradition.
The man chosen to replace Edward C. Gallagher
was Art Griffith. Art Griffith was the coach for Central High School
in Tulsa, Oklahoma
before succeeding Gallagher. In his 15 years there, he won 94 of 100 matches, including 50 in a row at one point. Because of this experience, he was selected to be the new Oklahoma State head coach. It ended up being a good choice, as he won 8 NCAA Championships in his 13 seasons there and continued two streaks left by Gallagher. First, he extended the four consecutive championships Gallagher had left with to 7, finally losing out in 1947 to Cornell College
. Second, he extended the 27 consecutive dual meet victory streak to 76, before finally losing in 1951. Griffith's wrestlers won 27 individual championships and were All-Americans 64 times from 1941-1956. He retired on top after winning three consecutive NCAA Championships and going 78-7-4 for his career, including ten undefeated teams.
One of Griffith's wrestlers, Myron Roderick, was chosen to immediately succeed his former coach following his retirement in 1956. As a wrestler for Griffith, Roderick went 42-2 and was a 3 time national champion from 1954-1956. After he returned from the 1956 Olympics
, he took over as head coach. His first team was one of his least successful, finishing fourth at nationals with only one champion and 3 All-Americans to his credit. However, his 1957-58 and 1958-59 teams dominated the NCAA tournament, winning in convincing fashion with four champions and 15 All-Americans between the two years. His 1960 team couldn't compete with a much stronger Oklahoma team coached by Thomas Evans. However, Roderick's teams once again rebounded with championships in 1961 and 1962, winning 5 individual championships and another 15 All-Americans. By the end of his career in 1969, he had coached 7 team champions, 20 individual champions, and 79 All-Americans.
The dual success continued – but the national titles ran dry – into the 1970s and 80s, with Tommy Chesbro
leading the way. The sudden rise of Iowa wrestling
under Dan Gable
shut off the NCAA title train, as the Cowboys won only one title under Chesbro’s watch. He was the coach from 1969–84 and his dual mark of 227-26-0 was the best record in the history of the program until it was passed recently by current coach John Smith
.
Smith
has recently re-established the dominance of OSU over the rest of the wrestling world by winning four straight national championships (2003–06). Smith took over the Cowboy wrestling program in 1991 in the wake of NCAA sanctions and probation leftover from previous head coach Joe Seay who had won two national titles with a 114-18-2 overall record. Smith’s first season saw the Cowboys take second at Nationals, but his second season was crippled by the probation. The Pokes went 4-7 and were banned from post-season competition. But the next season, the Cowboys were back as top wrestlers who had taken a redshirt year during the probation (such as four-time champion, and current assistant coach Pat Smith
) were back on the mat. OSU went 13-1 that year and won the team title.
The middle part of the 90s, however, saw the OSU program grow somewhat stagnant. Wrestlers were still winning individual titles and claiming All-American honors and the team was still winning Big Eight
and Big 12 Conference
crowns, but their showings at Nationals were disappointing. Between 1995-2002, the Cowboys placed no better than second (once, in 1997) and finished third three times (1998, 1999, 2001). But in 2002, the Cowboys were back in the saddle once again, winning the conference and NCAA titles and sporting a 17-0 record. Including that championship season up through 2005, OSU sported a combined record of 55-2. Smith currently has 239 wins as coach at OSU, the most ever in school history.
in Stillwater. The arena is named in part after Oklahoma State's legendary wrestling coach Edward C. Gallagher
. Gallagher-Iba was known as Gallagher Hall for nearly five decades until the name was amended to honor former Oklahoma State basketball coach Henry Iba
upon the facility's first renovation during the 1987-1988 season. Oklahoma State has held their home wrestling meets in the arena since its completion in 1938. The arena was formally dedicated on February 3, 1939 during a wrestling dual versus Indiana
. During the December 9, 2005 Bedlam
wrestling dual, a permanently reserved seat for Gallagher was unveiled, adjacent to a reserved seat for Iba.
Gallagher-Iba underwent a massive renovation project in 2000 and 2001, which included an expansion of the seating capacity
from 6,381 to the present 13,611. While the expansion project caused attendance at basketball games to almost double, the wrestling crowds have yet to pack the arena to the rafters as they did in the original Gallagher Hall. However, attendance usually spikes when rivals come to Stillwater, most notably the Iowa Hawkeyes
, Minnesota Golden Gophers
, and Bedlam foe Oklahoma
. While the unruly atmosphere has been somewhat diminished, the renovation project has yielded positives for the Cowboy wrestling program. Among which are the new wrestling center and other new training facilities built inside the athletics center, much to the benefit all OSU student-athletes.
The venerable arena has long played a part in the history and legends of the OSU wrestling program. During the 1978 Big 8
wrestling championships, a standing-room-only crowd of 8,300 made such a huge roar that many of the lights in the arena burst. Gallagher-Iba has also seen many long undefeated streaks for the Pokes, including 34 unbeaten and untied seasons at home. The home mat advantage for the Pokes and the ferocious attitude of the thousands of OSU fans packed in the original 6,381-seat bandbox led to the arena's nickname "Gallagher's House of Horrors."
and hardwood
, the Bedlam Series roots lie on the wrestling mat. In fact, the term 'Bedlam' used to describe this intrastate rivalry has its roots based in the rivalry that brewed between the schools' prestigious wrestling programs. The term is said to have been born on the night of a particularly heated wrestling dual in Stillwater at Gallagher Hall. A newspaper writer was said to have emerged from the building exclaiming to others outside, "It's bedlam in there!"
Oklahoma State holds a seemingly insurmountable advantage in the wrestling series, which began in 1920. The Cowboys own an impressive 126-26-10 record against the Sooners through the 2009-10 season. While normally this sort of one-sided advantage can be attributed to one school being rather weak, the Bedlam domination by Oklahoma State is very different in that Oklahoma actually has one of the historically strongest wrestling programs in America. This dominance over such a highly touted rival has long been a source of great pride for Oklahoma State fans. In recent years, Bedlam wrestling duals in Norman
have been moved out of the Lloyd Noble Center
to the considerably smaller McCasland Field House
so as to prevent Cowboy fans from dominating the atmosphere despite being the visiting team.
Both programs have been very successful on the national level, Oklahoma winning seven team national championships in its history, while Oklahoma State's highly decorated wrestling program has amassed a record thirty-four team national titles. http://www.ncaasports.com/wrestling/mens/history/divi
National Collegiate Athletic Association
The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a semi-voluntary association of 1,281 institutions, conferences, organizations and individuals that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States...
Division I wrestling
Collegiate wrestling
Collegiate wrestling, sometimes known in the United States as Folkstyle wrestling, is a style of amateur wrestling practised at the collegiate and university level in the United States. Collegiate wrestling emerged from the folk wrestling styles practised in the early history of the United States...
program and is one of five Big 12 Conference
Big 12 Conference
The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference of ten schools located in the Central United States, with its headquarters located in Las Colinas, a community in the Dallas, Texas suburb of Irving...
schools which participate in wrestling. Since the team's first season in 1914-15, it has won thirty-four team national championships
NCAA Wrestling Team Championship
The NCAA Wrestling Team Championship was first officially awarded in 1929 and began to be continuously awarded on an annual basis in 1934 except during World War II 1943-1945. In 1928 and from 1931 to 1933, there was only an unofficial title. Oklahoma A&M, now Oklahoma State, won the 1928, 1931...
(three which are unofficial), 133 individual NCAA championships, and 213 wrestlers have earned All-America
All-America
An All-America team is an honorary sports team composed of outstanding amateur players—those considered the best players of a specific season for each team position—who in turn are given the honorific "All-America" and typically referred to as "All-American athletes", or simply...
n honors 423 times. The Cowboys won the first official NCAA Division I Wrestling Team Championship in 1929. The Cowboys have won 42 conference team championships and 232 individual conference titles. The program owns an all-time dual record of 1000-113-23. On January 28th 2011 OSU became only the 2nd school in NCAA history to record one thousand duel Victories, joining Iowa State University.
History
Cowboy wrestling extends back to 1914-15 when A.M. Colville coached the school's first team. That team lost the school's first dual meet to Texas. The next season, legendary coach Edward C. GallagherEdward C. Gallagher (wrestling)
Edward Clark Gallagher was the Oklahoma A&M wrestling coach from 1916-1940. With his knowledge of physical principles like leverage and stress along with anatomy he all but invented the modern style of wrestling. He remains one of the most successful coaches in NCAA athletics history...
would take over the team. He coached the first national championship team in 1929. He was also the coach of eight of the first nine national champion teams as his teams won in 1929, 1930, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1938, 1939, and 1940. Only a strong 1936 Oklahoma team coached by Paul Keen kept him from sweeping the first 9 official NCAA Championships. He coached 50 official All-Americans and 26 official individual champions in the earliest days of the tournament. Following his death in 1940, the school had to find a coach who could continue their winning tradition.
The man chosen to replace Edward C. Gallagher
Edward C. Gallagher (wrestling)
Edward Clark Gallagher was the Oklahoma A&M wrestling coach from 1916-1940. With his knowledge of physical principles like leverage and stress along with anatomy he all but invented the modern style of wrestling. He remains one of the most successful coaches in NCAA athletics history...
was Art Griffith. Art Griffith was the coach for Central High School
Central High School (Tulsa, Oklahoma)
Central High School is the oldest high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was founded in 1906 as Tulsa High School, and located in downtown Tulsa until 1976. The school now has a campus in northwest Tulsa. Tulsa Central is part of the Tulsa Public Schools, Oklahoma's largest school district, and is a...
in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
before succeeding Gallagher. In his 15 years there, he won 94 of 100 matches, including 50 in a row at one point. Because of this experience, he was selected to be the new Oklahoma State head coach. It ended up being a good choice, as he won 8 NCAA Championships in his 13 seasons there and continued two streaks left by Gallagher. First, he extended the four consecutive championships Gallagher had left with to 7, finally losing out in 1947 to Cornell College
Cornell College
Cornell College is a private liberal arts college in Mount Vernon, Iowa. Originally called the Iowa Conference Seminary, the school was founded in 1853 by Reverend Samuel M. Fellows...
. Second, he extended the 27 consecutive dual meet victory streak to 76, before finally losing in 1951. Griffith's wrestlers won 27 individual championships and were All-Americans 64 times from 1941-1956. He retired on top after winning three consecutive NCAA Championships and going 78-7-4 for his career, including ten undefeated teams.
One of Griffith's wrestlers, Myron Roderick, was chosen to immediately succeed his former coach following his retirement in 1956. As a wrestler for Griffith, Roderick went 42-2 and was a 3 time national champion from 1954-1956. After he returned from the 1956 Olympics
1956 Summer Olympics
The 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was held in Melbourne, Australia, in 1956, with the exception of the equestrian events, which could not be held in Australia due to quarantine regulations...
, he took over as head coach. His first team was one of his least successful, finishing fourth at nationals with only one champion and 3 All-Americans to his credit. However, his 1957-58 and 1958-59 teams dominated the NCAA tournament, winning in convincing fashion with four champions and 15 All-Americans between the two years. His 1960 team couldn't compete with a much stronger Oklahoma team coached by Thomas Evans. However, Roderick's teams once again rebounded with championships in 1961 and 1962, winning 5 individual championships and another 15 All-Americans. By the end of his career in 1969, he had coached 7 team champions, 20 individual champions, and 79 All-Americans.
The dual success continued – but the national titles ran dry – into the 1970s and 80s, with Tommy Chesbro
Tommy Chesbro
Tommy Chesbro was an Oklahoma State University all-star wrestler and coach. As coach he led the Oklahoma state wrestling team to the NCAA Wrestling Team Championship on at least one occasion...
leading the way. The sudden rise of Iowa wrestling
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
under Dan Gable
Dan Gable
Dan Gable is an American amateur wrestler. He is famous for having only lost one match in his entire Iowa State University collegiate career—his last, and winning gold at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany while not giving up a single point...
shut off the NCAA title train, as the Cowboys won only one title under Chesbro’s watch. He was the coach from 1969–84 and his dual mark of 227-26-0 was the best record in the history of the program until it was passed recently by current coach John Smith
John Smith (wrestler)
John William Smith is a successful college wrestler, 6-time World Champion, 2-time Olympic Games champion, and is currently the head coach of wrestling at Oklahoma State University.-High school career:...
.
Smith
John Smith (wrestler)
John William Smith is a successful college wrestler, 6-time World Champion, 2-time Olympic Games champion, and is currently the head coach of wrestling at Oklahoma State University.-High school career:...
has recently re-established the dominance of OSU over the rest of the wrestling world by winning four straight national championships (2003–06). Smith took over the Cowboy wrestling program in 1991 in the wake of NCAA sanctions and probation leftover from previous head coach Joe Seay who had won two national titles with a 114-18-2 overall record. Smith’s first season saw the Cowboys take second at Nationals, but his second season was crippled by the probation. The Pokes went 4-7 and were banned from post-season competition. But the next season, the Cowboys were back as top wrestlers who had taken a redshirt year during the probation (such as four-time champion, and current assistant coach Pat Smith
Pat Smith
Pat Smith is a former collegiate wrestler at Oklahoma State University and a former assistant coach at OSU. During his collegiate wrestling career, he became the first four-time NCAA wrestling champion in the sports history, a feat only equalled one other time by Cael Sanderson. Smith resigned...
) were back on the mat. OSU went 13-1 that year and won the team title.
The middle part of the 90s, however, saw the OSU program grow somewhat stagnant. Wrestlers were still winning individual titles and claiming All-American honors and the team was still winning Big Eight
Big Eight Conference
The Big Eight Conference, a former NCAA-affiliated Division I-A college athletic association that sponsored football, was formed in January 1907 as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association by its charter member schools: the University of Kansas, University of Missouri, University...
and Big 12 Conference
Big 12 Conference
The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference of ten schools located in the Central United States, with its headquarters located in Las Colinas, a community in the Dallas, Texas suburb of Irving...
crowns, but their showings at Nationals were disappointing. Between 1995-2002, the Cowboys placed no better than second (once, in 1997) and finished third three times (1998, 1999, 2001). But in 2002, the Cowboys were back in the saddle once again, winning the conference and NCAA titles and sporting a 17-0 record. Including that championship season up through 2005, OSU sported a combined record of 55-2. Smith currently has 239 wins as coach at OSU, the most ever in school history.
Home meets
Home meets are held in the 13,611 seat Gallagher-Iba ArenaGallagher-Iba Arena
Gallagher-Iba Arena, also known as "The Rowdiest Arena in the Country" and "The Madison Square Garden of the Plains”, is the basketball and wrestling venue at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, United States...
in Stillwater. The arena is named in part after Oklahoma State's legendary wrestling coach Edward C. Gallagher
Edward C. Gallagher (wrestling)
Edward Clark Gallagher was the Oklahoma A&M wrestling coach from 1916-1940. With his knowledge of physical principles like leverage and stress along with anatomy he all but invented the modern style of wrestling. He remains one of the most successful coaches in NCAA athletics history...
. Gallagher-Iba was known as Gallagher Hall for nearly five decades until the name was amended to honor former Oklahoma State basketball coach Henry Iba
Henry Iba
Henry Payne "Hank" Iba was an American basketball and baseball coach.-Early life:Iba was born and raised in Easton, Missouri...
upon the facility's first renovation during the 1987-1988 season. Oklahoma State has held their home wrestling meets in the arena since its completion in 1938. The arena was formally dedicated on February 3, 1939 during a wrestling dual versus Indiana
Indiana University Bloomington
Indiana University Bloomington is a public research university located in Bloomington, Indiana, in the United States. IU Bloomington is the flagship campus of the Indiana University system. Being the flagship campus, IU Bloomington is often referred to simply as IU or Indiana...
. During the December 9, 2005 Bedlam
Bedlam Series
The Bedlam Series refers to the athletics rivalry between the University of Oklahoma Sooners and the Oklahoma State University Cowboys, of the Big 12 Conference...
wrestling dual, a permanently reserved seat for Gallagher was unveiled, adjacent to a reserved seat for Iba.
Gallagher-Iba underwent a massive renovation project in 2000 and 2001, which included an expansion of the seating capacity
Seating capacity
Seating capacity refers to the number of people who can be seated in a specific space, both in terms of the physical space available, and in terms of limitations set by law. Seating capacity can be used in the description of anything ranging from an automobile that seats two to a stadium that seats...
from 6,381 to the present 13,611. While the expansion project caused attendance at basketball games to almost double, the wrestling crowds have yet to pack the arena to the rafters as they did in the original Gallagher Hall. However, attendance usually spikes when rivals come to Stillwater, most notably the Iowa Hawkeyes
Iowa Hawkeyes wrestling
The University of Iowa wrestling program is one of the most successful athletic programs in NCAA Division I. The University of Iowa Hawkeyes are a member of the Big Ten Athletic Conference. Iowa is second in NCAA history with 23 national championships, all of which have come since 1975...
, Minnesota Golden Gophers
Minnesota Golden Gophers wrestling
The Minnesota Golden Gophers are a Division I college wrestling team based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They are a member of the Big Ten Conference and NCAA. Wrestling began at the University of Minnesota in 1910, but the first formal dual meet was not until 1921 when coach Frank Gilman led the team...
, and Bedlam foe Oklahoma
University of Oklahoma
The University of Oklahoma is a coeducational public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two became the state of Oklahoma. the university had 29,931 students enrolled, most located at its...
. While the unruly atmosphere has been somewhat diminished, the renovation project has yielded positives for the Cowboy wrestling program. Among which are the new wrestling center and other new training facilities built inside the athletics center, much to the benefit all OSU student-athletes.
The venerable arena has long played a part in the history and legends of the OSU wrestling program. During the 1978 Big 8
Big Eight Conference
The Big Eight Conference, a former NCAA-affiliated Division I-A college athletic association that sponsored football, was formed in January 1907 as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association by its charter member schools: the University of Kansas, University of Missouri, University...
wrestling championships, a standing-room-only crowd of 8,300 made such a huge roar that many of the lights in the arena burst. Gallagher-Iba has also seen many long undefeated streaks for the Pokes, including 34 unbeaten and untied seasons at home. The home mat advantage for the Pokes and the ferocious attitude of the thousands of OSU fans packed in the original 6,381-seat bandbox led to the arena's nickname "Gallagher's House of Horrors."
Bedlam
Despite the overwhelming mainstream popularity of the games played on the gridironAmerican football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
and hardwood
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
, the Bedlam Series roots lie on the wrestling mat. In fact, the term 'Bedlam' used to describe this intrastate rivalry has its roots based in the rivalry that brewed between the schools' prestigious wrestling programs. The term is said to have been born on the night of a particularly heated wrestling dual in Stillwater at Gallagher Hall. A newspaper writer was said to have emerged from the building exclaiming to others outside, "It's bedlam in there!"
Oklahoma State holds a seemingly insurmountable advantage in the wrestling series, which began in 1920. The Cowboys own an impressive 126-26-10 record against the Sooners through the 2009-10 season. While normally this sort of one-sided advantage can be attributed to one school being rather weak, the Bedlam domination by Oklahoma State is very different in that Oklahoma actually has one of the historically strongest wrestling programs in America. This dominance over such a highly touted rival has long been a source of great pride for Oklahoma State fans. In recent years, Bedlam wrestling duals in Norman
Norman, Oklahoma
Norman is a city in Cleveland County, Oklahoma, United States, and is located south of downtown Oklahoma City. It is part of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. As of the 2010 census, Norman was to have 110,925 full-time residents, making it the third-largest city in Oklahoma and the...
have been moved out of the Lloyd Noble Center
Lloyd Noble Center
The Lloyd Noble Center is an 11,528-seat multi-purpose arena, in Norman, Oklahoma, United States, some south of downtown Oklahoma City...
to the considerably smaller McCasland Field House
McCasland Field House
The McCasland Field House is a multi-purpose indoor arena on the University of Oklahoma main campus in Norman, Oklahoma. Home of the basketball Sooners until 1975, the Field House currently hosts the men's wrestling, women's volleyball, and men's and women's gymnastics teams. The Field House is...
so as to prevent Cowboy fans from dominating the atmosphere despite being the visiting team.
Both programs have been very successful on the national level, Oklahoma winning seven team national championships in its history, while Oklahoma State's highly decorated wrestling program has amassed a record thirty-four team national titles. http://www.ncaasports.com/wrestling/mens/history/divi