Wrestling Talk Forums supported
USA Wrestling Kansas KWCA
Wrestling Talk Forums supported & maintained by USA Wrestling-Kansas
USAW USA Wrestling Kansas
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 102
S
Member
Member
S Offline
Joined: Feb 2010
Posts: 102
www.savecaliforniawrestling.com
CPCCW Letter to Lieutenant Governor Garamendi
February 24, 2010



From:

The Committee for the Preservation
of California Collegiate Wrestling
8409 Windjammer Drive
Bakersfield, CA. 93312
(661) 679-7225




Lieutenant Governor Garamendi,

My name is Ernest Ciaccio and I represent my fellow members of the Committee for the Preservation of California Collegiate Wrestling. I also know that I adequately express the feelings of hundreds of thousands of Californians who make up our current Wrestling community. These Californians are current and former coaches, competitors, and in many cases life long fans of Wrestling. I have spent the last nineteen years of my adult life amongst my wrestling brethren, and believe that they make up the greatest fraternal organization in the world. I have witnessed countless lives that have been changed as a direct result of Wrestling and the character traits that our sport helps to instill in its participants. While our sport has born Presidents, Politicians, Judges, Doctors, and many other successful members of society the opportunity to participate in Wrestling at the collegiate level has declined over the last forty years.

I know that you share both our pain and frustration. As a champion wrestler for the University of California at Berkley in 1964 you became part of a legacy that is on the verge of being destroyed. One of wrestling’s greatest ambassadors, Bill Martell, was forced to break his promise to athletes as the program he guided for fifteen years while employed at the University of California at Berkley was discontinued in 1979. Over the last four decades countless other programs have been lost at the Community College and NCAA levels. We in the Wrestling community have followed your career closely, always admiring your vision and willingness to affect change in our great state. We understand that a career in public service is often challenging. We also know that being elected by the people, to serve the people provides an opportunity to create a lasting impact on society.

It has been over forty five years since you completed your championship quest on the mat, and now we ask you to champion a new cause while fighting an old foe. In doing so you will preserve not only your legacy but ours as well. While phrases like Title IX, gender equity, and proportionality testing have never been popular inside the state building in Sacramento we ask you to call for reform. In 1774 there were many phrases spoken that were unpopular and believed to be sure political suicide, however in 1776 the United States of America was founded on those former ill conceived tenets. Nearly two hundred and fifty years later we find ourselves once again needing fearless leaders to address what many agree are uncomfortable misnomers of the past. Today we find the last of our NCAA Wrestling programs facing discontinuation due to Title IX under the cover of the states current budget crisis. A perfect example of this discriminatory action can be found on the campus of California State University at Bakersfield, where the President of the University has said that the Wrestling program will be discontinued at the conclusion of this season. The President based his decision on a lack of overall funding from the state that is affecting many departments within the University. When approached by supportive and compassionate community members such as our organization, willing to self fund the Wrestling program in order to alleviate some of the burden of the state the President expressed that all sports being discontinued would be required to be funded in order for the Wrestling program to be reinstated. The reason given for the all or none funding requirement was a need to satisfy gender equity ratios.


California is home to more than one hundred thousand youth wrestlers, with over twenty five thousand participants at the high school level alone. Statistically California’s participation in Wrestling is the highest in the country nearly doubling Illinois, Ohio, and New York. California maintains just five state sponsored Wrestling programs that compete at the NCAA level. The fate of these five programs is feared to hinge on the sustainability of one another due to conference participation, funding, and decreasing support at the higher education administrative level. Many fear if the program at California State University at Bakersfield is discontinued as planned it will set in motion a domino like effect resulting in the loss of the remaining four programs. In addition the talent rich high school programs in California’s Central Valley will no longer have a program for local student athletes that wish to stay close to home. Woman’s wrestling is currently growing at a rapid pace across the nation. This trend is especially apparent in California where multiple World Champions and Olympic hopefuls call home. The Committee for the Preservation of California Collegiate Wrestling has developed a detailed plan to assist in the financial needs of our current state sponsored Wrestling programs, to advance Woman’s Wrestling at the NCAA level, and to ensure that the legacies of wrestlers past, present, and future are protected.

We ask you to become our advocate in Sacramento both as our Lieutenant Governor and as a Regent of the University of California and Trustee for the California State University System. We understand the financial challenges that the state currently is facing, and will burden the cost of maintaining the five state sponsored programs at the NCAA level alone. We will also submit a roadmap to your office outlining our plan for the advancement of Woman’s Wrestling at the five state sponsored institutions. In closing I ask that you host a conference with myself and fellow board members to form a structured plan eliminating current discriminatory policies being instituted at state sponsored institutions such as California State University at Bakersfield. We look forward to assisting your office in drafting a solution that will divert a life changing event for the student athletes currently in jeopardy of being discriminated against. These discriminatory actions are a bi-product of failed legislative policy spanning nearly four decades. Since 1972 individuals and organizations have successfully argued in court against Title IX. While judges admit Title IX to be injurious and ironically discriminatory few public servants at the state level or in Washington D.C. have ever been in favor of legislating any kind of reform. We are asking you Lieutenant Governor to create a solution that Title IX was originally meant to deliver. In doing so you will not only cement our collective legacies, but more importantly you will have a lasting impact on society.




Warmest Regards,



Ernest Ciaccio

Co-Founder of The Committee for the Preservation of California Collegiate Wrestling

www.savecaliforniawrestling.com

Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 1,267
Member
Member
Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 1,267
What's the deal with all of the love for the Left Coast in the most land locked state in the Union? This is a Kansas high school wrestling site, go push your smut somewhere else you liberal hippy.








Just to let you know I'm being facetious, so take my comments with a grain of salt. Enjoy our state for all its wonderment.


[Linked Image from media1.tenor.com]
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 2,933
S
Member
Member
S Offline
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 2,933
We've been spammed! Kind of like watching a neckcar race in person but never moving your head from side to side.


Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 2,555
Member
Member
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 2,555
Originally Posted By: Ricky Bobby
What's the deal with all of the love for the Left Coast in the most land locked state in the Union? This is a Kansas high school wrestling site, go push your smut somewhere else you liberal hippy.








Just to let you know I'm being facetious, so take my comments with a grain of salt. Enjoy our state for all its wonderment.


I like how you highlight those bid fancy words, and the link tells me what it means. I will use it the next time I use the word arse.


Unnecessary Roughness is Necessary

Moderated by  Nate Naasz, RedStorm 

Link Copied to Clipboard
Who's Online Now
0 members (), 9 guests, and 0 robots.
Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
Newest Members
Super Admin, bvswwrestling, CoachFitzOS, Dluce, Shawn Russell
12,303 Registered Users
Forum Statistics
Forums11
Topics36,091
Posts250,722
Members12,303
Most Online1,305
Mar 13th, 2025
Top Posters
usawks1 8,595
smokeycabin 6,248
Aaron Sweazy 5,262
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 8.0.0
(Release build 20240826)
Responsive Width:

PHP: 8.3.23 Page Time: 0.025s Queries: 22 (0.016s) Memory: 3.0240 MB (Peak: 3.5912 MB) Data Comp: Off Server Time: 2025-08-02 00:27:04 UTC
Valid HTML 5 and Valid CSS