Column: Grappling goal: USS Midway wrestling dual becomes annual San Diego event

The voice inside Aaron Root’s head whispered what-if after what-if. What if the Battle on the Midway, a college wrestling dual scheduled for Tuesday night atop the USS Midway, caught on?

What if the debut between Fresno State and Air Force, with soaring fly-overs and SEAL teams and singlets, created a lasting bridge between San Diego’s military history and a sport as history-rich as Ancient Greece itself?

What if Root’s idea found real roots, growing into the season-launching anchor of its sport – like college football’s old Kickoff Classic?

“We’ve lost the Poinsettia Bowl, the Chargers are gone,” said Root, a San Diegan who played college football at Union College in New York and caught the wrestling bug through his 12-year-old son’s success in the sport.

“We can showcase the city. We could plant the flag and consider this thing an annual event.”

Wrestling is California’s ultimate mixed-bag. The state boasts the most youth participants in the country, nearly 38,000 according to USA Wrestling, and features powerhouse programs like Buchanan, Clovis, Poway and Gilroy — with only Ohio matching the four ranked among InterMat’s national Top 20.

California colleges, however, have been wobbled by the wake of Title IX, the federal legislation that guarantees equal opportunities for women. As athletic budgets tighten, squaring those numbers many times means cutting men’s sports rather than adding women.

Wrestling, especially in California, became an uncomfortable target.

Just four Division I programs remain — Stanford, Cal Poly, Cal Bakersfield and Midway-bound Fresno State, which just reinstated its program under coach Troy Steiner.

“Being the only (D-I) program that’s been brought back, if we get this thing off and running and do it right, other institutions will do the same thing,” said Steiner, a national champion and four-time All-American at the University of Iowa. “We’ve got to get the pendulum swinging the other way.

“When Aaron asked if we’d be interested in coming to San Diego and wrestling on the Midway, I said, ‘We’re in. Let’s do it.’ ”

Economic realities strangling the sport increase the urgency for wrestling to gain attention – and steam. One result: Programs are growing more creative about where they do their thing.

In November 2015, Iowa and Oklahoma State staged an outdoor dual at a college football stadium. An NCAA-record 42,287 showed up at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, a stunning 164 percent increase over the old mark.

USA Wrestling recently published a list of eight “cool and iconic places” where meets will be held this season, ranging from a hockey rink in Allentown, Pa., to a Frank Lloyd Wright campus theater in Tempe, Ariz., and the “Tussle for the Troops” between Oklahoma State and North Carolina State in Naples, Italy.

And No. 1 on list? This Tuesday, in San Diego.

“We need wrestling,” said Dan Gable, the sport’s greatest coach at Iowa who won Olympic gold without surrendering a point in 1972 and lost just one college match. “I feel that mission. I look at California and my eyes are on (the Olympics in) L.A. in 2028.

“It’s a shame California doesn’t look out more for its high school people and make sure there are opportunities later.”

Gable, who will be aboard the Midway next week, said the record-setting meet in 2015 proved bigger horizons remain possible for an out-of-the-mainstream sport.

“We had people tweeting us from Russia, from Iran, from across the world, they were watching it,” he said. “There’s so many life skills in our sport. Most people think it’s a barbaric-type thing. People pick on us a lot because a lot of people haven’t wrestled or been exposed to the sport.”

Exposure will unfold in a picture-postcard location along San Diego Bay. The mat will be elevated two feet above the flight deck, as Marines and SEAL teams 5 and 7 watch from above. An Air Force fly-over is being organized for 4:45 p.m. as fans attend a pre-event on nearby Broadway Pier.

The splash, Root hopes, fuels sustainability.

“San Diego is a military town, and who doesn’t want to be here, especially at this time of year?” he said. “So we hope to have Navy next year, Army the following year and maybe do something like the winning academy stays on.

“We’ve talked about a 16-team annual dual down the road at the end of December or beginning of January. There are a lot of options.”

Root said although he wrestled just one season, as junior in high school, an unshakable impression lingered.

“It leaves a mark on you, because of the hard work and how you learn to deal with adversity after a loss,” he said. “It’s similar to being a hitter in baseball. You have to have a short memory. You can go 0-for-4, but you have to put it behind you. In wrestling, you can only blame yourself. It’s up to you.

“Plus, wrestling is probably the most instinctive thing kids do. When you put kids in front of a TV on a Saturday morning to watch cartoons, when you get to the first commercial, what are they doing? I was the youngest of five boys, so I had to learn how to wrestle just to survive.”

Surviving is exactly what the savvier-by-the-moment sport is fighting to do.

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Battle on the Midway

Fresno State and Air Force will compete in the first college wrestling dual on a large military vessel Tuesday in San Diego.

When, where: 7 p.m., on downtown’s USS Midway.

On deck: Six USA Wrestling matches — women, freestyle and Greco-Roman — take place before the dual, beginning at 6 p.m.

Pre-event: Since the Midway will remain open to the general public until 5 p.m., a pre-event party for ticket-holders will run from 2-5:30 p.m. on neighboring Broadway Pier.

It will feature beer, street tacos, wrestling vendors and expected appearances by former world champ and NFL player Stephen Neal of San Diego High; San Diego native J Robinson, who coached Minnesota to three NCAA titles; and Dan Gable, an Olympic gold medalist who is the winningest coach in college history.

Tickets, Website, more: Range from $25-$200, can be purchased on site or at LeftCoastWrestling.com.

bryce.miller@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @Bryce_A_Miller