Stanford devastated the wrestling community today by announcing that they will be discontinuing 11 sports, including the wrestling program, at the end of the 2020-21 season. This was confirmed by a tweet from the Stanford Athletics account.

Stanford University announced Wednesday the reduction of varsity athletics programs and staffing. https://t.co/hvZWxzEMRM

— Stanford Athletics (@GoStanford) July 8, 2020

The Stanford wrestling team boasted five NCAA qualifiers this year including Shane Griffith and Real Woods who were both seeded third at 165 and 141, respectively. In fact, earlier this spring, Coach Jason Borrelli explained on The Bader Show that Stanford had more freshmen NCAA qualifiers than any other program.

They were also looking forward to the addition of 149 Southern Scuffle champ Jaden Abas to the varsity lineup this season and had a strong group of recruits in place for the fall.

Stanford outlined a detailed rationale for choosing the 11 sports they will be cutting. The criteria were outlined in a section called, "Why These 11 Sports" and are as follows:

Why these 11 sports?

These 11 sports were decided upon after a comprehensive evaluation of all of our sports across a broad set of criteria and considerations, including, but not limited to:

• Sponsorship of the sport at the NCAA Division I level
• National youth and postgraduate participation in the sport
• Local and national fan interest in the sport
• Potential expense savings from the elimination of the sport
• Incremental investments required to keep or put the sport in a position to achieve competitive excellence on the national level
• History of the sport at Stanford
• Prospects for future success of the sport at Stanford
• Impact on gender equity and Title IX compliance
• Impact on the diversity of our student-athlete population
• Impact on the student-athlete experience across all sports, now and in the future

For example, simply looking at sponsorship of the sports at a national level as one consideration:

• Of the 11 sports being discontinued, six (lightweight rowing, men’s rowing, co-ed and women’s sailing, squash, synchronized swimming) are not NCAA-sponsored championship sports.
• All 11 sports being discontinued are sponsored by less than 22% of the more than 350 Division I institutions, and nine (men’s and women’s fencing, lightweight rowing, men’s rowing, co-ed and women’s sailing, squash, synchronized swimming, men’s volleyball) are sponsored by less than 9%.
• There are only two other Division I field hockey programs on the West Coast, and there are no other fencing, lightweight rowing, sailing, squash or synchronized swimming programs on the West Coast.

Many of these sports currently compete without a full complement of scholarships (e.g. wrestling), coaches and resources. After careful analysis, we concluded there was no realistic path to ensuring that they have all of the resources needed to compete at the highest level without hindering our ability to support our other 25 varsity sports.

All of the impacted sports will have the opportunity to compete at the club level after their upcoming varsity seasons are complete, assuming sufficient student interest, but will need to do so in a financially self-sustaining manner that ensures the safety and well-being of the participants. We will immediately begin working with the student-athletes, parents, alumni and supporters of these sports to work toward providing robust opportunities for participation at the club level.