All of you must be thinking of when Gary Duff coached their club in an attempt to start a program at KU. It was a club and not affiliated with the Athletic Department.
After your post above I wanted to get more proof than the two articles and the NWCA dropped wrestling program list. I contacted the KU Memorial Union Director of Public Affairs by e-mail asking if he could help. It turns out we were both correct. Here is part of his reply.
What I gather from looking at some old yearbooks, KU dropped wrestling in about 1934. It added the sport again in 1964 (see attached.) The attachment mentions that 1964 was the first time they had the sport for 30 years. So your friend is right, most of the time the sport was a club sport or intramural sport. But there were definitely years that Wrestling was at KU and participated in conference and NCAA events.
So as you can see we were both correct in a sense. There was NCAA wrestling at KU early but it was dropped in 1934. NCAA wrestling at KU was not added again for thirty years in 1964. It was only an active program in the 60's for about three years because as both Mehringer articles state it was dropped again in 1967. So if you wrestled at KSU in that 30 year period before 1964 or after 1967 you are correct that KU did not have an active NCAA program in those years.
I wish I could get the attachment from 1964 on this post because it is a neat article from that time period with pictures but it is a .jpg file that I cannot get to copy on this post. Oh the attachement says Terry Shockley was the KU wrestling coach in 1964 when the program was resurrected.
Thanks for your input
