 |
 |
Why Give?
Duke Wrestling is striving to compete at the highest level in our sport, and our goal is to become a perennial Top-20 team in the NCAA Division-I. As you know, Duke is a top-level academic institution, and in the past several years several other top-level academic institutions have become top-level wrestling institutions. For instance, Cornell, UPenn, and Harvard, all Ivy League schools, have become great wrestling schools in the past several years, even without the aid of athletic scholarships.
The key is strong financial support. Our first goal is to hire two full-time assistant coaches. This will afford more manpower for recruiting the best wrestlers in the country who have the discipline to manage the academic demand of a university like Duke. Needless to say, there are only a handful of these wrestlers in the country available to be recruited each year, and it takes a lot of work to get them here. This will also require an increase in the recruiting budget, so that we can identify top prospects early on and devote a proper amount of time and resources to convince them that Duke is right for them.
The assistant coaches will also bring more technical mastery into the practice room and provide more attention to every wrestler. This will allow us to better sculpt wrestlers into the national competitors their instructors were.
As it is, we have two great assistant coaches in Cam Lawler and Corey Bell, who are each paid a mere pittance compared to the amount of effort and number of hours they each put in. Both of them have always had to work on the side to afford to get by. Much of the other work that would be done by full-time assistant coaches has to be performed by student-athletes on work-study. There is a high turnover rate in these jobs and, in turn, complications often arise. For example, more than once, a great potential recruit has been lost in the cracks of employee transition and given up his interest in the program in response to our lack of contact.
In addition to full-time assistant coaches, financial support is also needed to increase our travel budget, so that we can travel to better competition farther away. As the cliché states, “to be the best, you have to beat the best.” To beat the best, we must have the means to face the best.
Another area to which we hope to dedicate funds is technology. We are looking into using high-tech scouting equipment to better prepare for our matches, developing a new recruiting software program, and integrating what technology we can into our training and development as athletes to gain any edge possible on competition. Even on this website, which was built and developed by one of our own wrestlers, we hope to generate a scouting report database, offer broken down competition video, and provide online technical instruction for all our current wrestlers.
In the long term, our goal is to fully endow the wrestling program here, which would provide the program with a secure future. While Duke Wrestling is not in any imminent jeopardy, the sport as a whole is constantly on edge. Any added financial security we can get would help us both now and in the long run. So please, if you are a friend or fan of Duke wrestling, or an alumnus of the program itself, we would impart you to give what you can to ensure the longevity and success of the wrestling here at Duke. Thank you for your time and consideration.
|
|
|
Duke Wrestling Office
Box 90555
Durham, NC 27708
Ph: (919) 681-0249
Fax: (919) 681-7866
|
 |
19 ACC Champions
36 NCAA Qualifiers
ACC Coach of the Year
2x Highest Team GPA NCAA DI
5 Academic All-Americas (2008)
Back to Top.
|
|
|
|
|
