Oklahoma State, arguably the nation's most successful college wrestling program in terms of team and individual titles, is celebrating its 100th season by posting the first of what is expected to be a decade-by-decade look back at the Cowboy wrestling program at its official website Friday.
On April 2, 1915, wrestlers first took to the mat at the school that was then called Oklahoma A&M (Agricultural & Mechanical) College. Coached by A.M. Colville (shown in the above photo with that first wrestling team, wearing a bow tie), the five wrestlers had just one dual meet, losing to University of Texas.
The following season saw a similar result -- a 0-1 record -- but with a new head wrestling coach, Edward Clark Gallagher, a multi-sport star at Oklahoma State early in the 20th century who returned to his alma mater after serving as a coach and athletic director at Baker College in Kansas for a couple years.
Gallagher helped turn things around for the Tigers (the official name for all Oklahoma State teams back then; they didn't become the Cowboys until a decade or so later). In 1917, the wrestlers at the Stillwater college won two dual meets and tied the third. During the 1910s decade, Gallagher led Oklahoma State wrestling to an overall record of 2-2-1. (As with most college sports across the nation, the Oklahoma State mat program was shut down during World War I, as most men on campus went off to fight in Europe or help with the war effort at home.)
The 1910s for Oklahoma State wrestling was a preview of future greatness. In his coaching career that spanned roughly from just before World War I to just before America's involvement in World War II, Gallagher compiled an overall record of 138-5-4, for a .952 winning percentage, the highest for any coach at a major college wrestling program. His Cowboys claimed ten outright NCAA team titles, and tied for first on an eleventh. Thirty-seven wrestlers earned individual NCAA titles, while 68 earned NCAA All-American honors. From 1916 through 1940, Gallagher and his teams could claim nineteen undefeated seasons.
Long before interstate highways and jet air travel, Gallagher took his Oklahoma State wrestlers throughout the U.S. to take on the nation's top programs of the 1920s and 30s. Armed with an engineering degree from Oklahoma State, Gallagher worked with a human skeleton to create hundreds of wrestling holds, then shared that knowledge in two illustrated instructional books. Despite not having wrestled in high school or college, Gallagher became one of the all-time great college mat coaches, so named (along with Iowa's Dan Gable and Iowa State's Harold Nichols) in a 2005 online fan poll to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the NCAA Wrestling Championships. When he died in August 1940 of pneumonia just shy of his 53rd birthday, Edward Clark Gallagher was eulogized as "The Father of Intercollegiate Wrestling" and "The Knute Rockne of the Mats." His funeral in the then-new Gallagher Hall drew thousands of fans and former wrestlers. (That structure, substantially expanded and upgraded in 2000 and now called Gallagher-Iba Arena, celebrated its 75th birthday in 2014.)
Wrestling fans can only hope that the article "A Century of Cowboy Wrestling: 1910s" is just the first of a series of entertaining and enlightening features on the long, successful legacy that is Oklahoma State wrestling. Sadly, a number of college wrestling programs have seen their 100th anniversaries pass by without so much as a mention, let alone any sort of commemoration.
To learn more about Ed Gallagher and the Oklahoma State wrestling program from 1916-1940, check out this InterMat Rewind historical feature on the legendary Cowboy coach.
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