More than a sport

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, April 15th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: College wrestling at a crossroads.

MAST: The post-match interviews at the NCAA National Wrestling Championships this March are a testimony to the effectiveness of intentional discipleship. But recent changes in the NCAA have left many D1 wrestling programs in danger of closing.

WORLD correspondent Elizabeth Shenk has the story.

ELIZABETH SHENK: In the fall of 2024, All-American wrestler Taye Ghadiali was in his apartment, tripping on drugs and overwhelmed by darkness. He had been grappling with questions about spirituality and purpose for years. He’d tried drugs and New Age practices. But those were taking him down.

GHADIALI:  I was praying, praying to God to save me.

That night, Ghadiali experienced a spiritual reversal. Instantly, he got sober. He felt a different presence in the room.

GHADIALI: The spirit overcame me, like of love, peace, like I started breaking down and crying and just joy, like I couldn't run from this feeling that was in this room.  I couldn't stop saying, ‘Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.’

Before this moment, Ghadiali had never regarded Jesus as God.

But after getting arrested and kicked off the Campbell University team, Ghadiali’s coach had paired him up with a mentor: retired wrestling coach, Jerry Hartman.

GHADIALI: When I got in trouble, he was the first person that took a hold of me. We ended up doing Bible studies. He gave me a job.

Ghadiali says it was the first time he felt loved unconditionally.

GHADIALI: I trusted him and I was thankful that he was there for me. So he's teaching me about God, and so I'm just respecting him and listening to him, and he's just planting seeds.

Mentorship became discipleship when Ghadiali gave his life to Christ. His baptism sparked a revival on the wrestling team.

GHADIALI: Fifty people gave their life to Christ at my baptism.

Ghadiali transferred to the University of Michigan. He qualified for the Big Ten Championship and won.

GHADIALI: Jesus came for the weak, and not the strong. Put your trust in Jesus.

Ghadiali wasn’t alone in his post match testimony.

AUDIO: [Sound of wrestler testimonies]

Champions from multiple schools praised God after winning their matches.

AUDIO: [Sound of wrestler testimonies]

Christian coaches working in the field say wrestling programs are white for harvest and view themselves as key laborers. Mike Moyer, Executive Director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association, has a favorite quote by Billy Graham:

MIKE MOYER: Many coaches will impact more people in one year than the average person will in a lifetime.

But the teams themselves are being defunded or dropped based on one driver—revenue. Now that the NCAA is allowing each college to share up to $20.5 million of their revenue with their athletes, colleges invest dollars where they see the biggest return in order to stay competitive.

 MOYER: What everybody knows is the best athletes are gonna go to the schools that share the most money.

Staying competitive becomes the goal, often at the cost of non-revenue sports.

MOYER:  Unless Congress provides the antitrust protection, the NCAA, it's hard for them to govern. And as a result, you have this uncontrolled arms race, which will just accelerate the defunding and or elimination of Olympic sports.

The collegiate system is the biggest feeder of Olympic sports. Like Ghadiali, many wrestlers are the first in their families to get a college degree, made possible through athletic scholarships.

GHADIALI: That was like my first introduction to who Christ was. It, and it's like crazy that it's a Christian school, so that was the only school that gave me a full ride and gave me a shot to wrestle.

Moyer studies NCAA research. He says it’s significant that wrestling has the second largest percentage of college bound students of any NCAA sport.

MOYER: When you start defunding these programs. It's not just access, but because we have a large percentage of first generation college-bound students, they can't afford to go even if they want to.

Nolan Kisler is heading a coalition of alumni, coaches, parents and students to keep the wrestling program at his alma mater, California Baptist University, or CBU.

KISTLER: Four wrestlers this last season gave their life to Christ and were baptized because of the opportunity to wrestle at CBU. And that's the treasure that I think is being ignored by CBU and in this pursuit of fool's gold.

This July, CBU will compete in the Big West conference and is dropping their wrestling program after this season to justify the move.

AUDIO: [Sound from CBU protest]

KISTLER: Giving up these testimonies and these opportunities for young men to encounter Christ with the hope of having success in the championships over these schools that are just massively overfunded and where we're at a huge financial disadvantage. That's a foolish pursuit, especially if your mission statement is the Great Commission.

The D1 athletes whose programs cut scholarships or fold are in danger of losing the opportunity to wrestle and to get a college degree.

KISTLER: We want to protect opportunities. Like the four men who gave their life to Christ, like Taye. Examples like that where you have wrestlers coming from non-Christian homes and being exposed to the gospel because of the opportunity that wrestling on a division one program brings. I mean, and CBU is the only division one program in Southern California.

With the loss of the CBU program, only four remaining Christian colleges have D1 wrestling programs. While D2 and D3 wrestling programs are springing up all over the country, they don’t offer full-ride athletic scholarships. Opting-in to revenue sharing means adopting roster caps and making scholarships optional.

MOYER: As you eliminate these college opportunities, it's gonna impact the number of teachers and coaches at every level below it. And so there's absolutely a domino effect. That's gonna occur, that is already occurring, that our society is gonna regret if we don't turn this around.

As D1 programs stand at this crossroads, Kisler believes the long-term gain is obvious.

KISTLER: They're at this juncture where they can choose to honor their mission, honor their virtues, the things that they've held true or they can choose this worldly pursuit and seek things that are non-eternal.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Elizabeth Shenk.

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