Dennis Hastert holding a trophy after the wrestling team he coached won the state championship in 1976I was once an employee of Speaker Hastert, interning in the summers of 2000 and 2001 for his congressional office on Capitol Hill. In my first year the work was basic, if not droll, with little more being asked of my faculties than shuttling constituents along on Capitol tours, answering phones and taking care of the mail. The time was made more interesting by the Chandra Levy crisis and the various media-driven fallouts that would affect interns from around the Hill. Some had mistakenly chosen to speak with the press about THEIR relationship with the male congressman only to find their desks empty the morning after their interviews aired on TV.
My role matured a bit in 2001 after I was asked to compile stories of men affected by Title IX. The assignment was meaty, allowing me both an opportunity to work on something more than my letter opening skills and to be part of something possibly consequential. As a wrestler at Virginia we had ourselves just dodged a previous year's attempt to cut our program -- largely for reasons, we were told, to do with Title IX.
The Speaker didn't directly address my work, but on the occasions I met him he'd ask about the project and about my training. In the end a commission was formed, but needing majority approval for changed to the Office of Civil Rights' standing interpretation, the two nay votes cast by Brandi Chastain and Sheryl Swoopes torpedoed the effort.
After college, a coworker from the Speaker's office got me a job working as a low-level staffer for the 2004 Mel Martinez for Senate campaign in Florida. We won, but by the end of the campaign I'd seen enough of politics. I'd spent a considerable amount of time with some of the biggest Republican names at the time, but politics -- specifically Martinez's dismantling of opponent Betty Castor's support of equal rights for the LGBT community -- left me jaded. Martinez -- whose posturing and antics around the matter knew no limits -- actually employed more than a handful of gay men and yet each week stumped about their sins.
I left my behind-the-scenes political ambitions and returned to coaching, then later to this career which allows me to travel for, discuss and practice the sport I love.
With some perspective it became easier to see what is now abundantly clear. Speaker Hastert was never "Coach" or a man focused on positive change in his community. He was always an opportunist and a pragmatist. What made him great at politicking is the same part of his ethos that was effective at manipulating and silencing of the boys he molested. The sexual abuse of his high school wrestling team is not morally comparable to some drunken night at a Vegas strip joint. The former Speaker of the House violated the trust of those in his command in the most intimate manner and did so without remorse -- his current attrition only a show in the hopes of finding fewer years locked in a steel cage. His whole career was a sham, a series of personal gains based on a lie about wholesome Midwestern values and conciliatory policy making.
The unfortunate reality is that America, like the wrestling community, continues to fall for these unscrupulous leaders. The men (and women) who display outward badges of HONOR and SUCCESS so often become leaders who most entangle and endanger our communities. In the midst of being led astray we are too quick to assign them labels as holier-than-thou leaders, free of personal fault or indiscretion, and give them access to the highest realms of power and influence.
For wrestling, the clown show of manipulative, self-interested leaders is as old as the sport, but America, in the last 20 years, has the distinction of giving national titles for excellence to a would-be murderer (John du Pont) and a child molester. To add insult to the current set of circumstances University of Chicago head wrestling coach Leo Kocher wrote a letter to the presiding judge asking for leniency, in part because of Hastert's work in combating Title IX. Were there a ranking of all-time boneheaded, thick-skulled, tone-deaf responses to a tragedy, Leo Kocher's would be an almost impossible to top nugget.
Dennis HastertToday, with the court cases sidelined, the sport is rebounding, adapting and growing. There is a burgeoning women's wrestling culture in this country in large part thanks to pro-Title IX efforts, like those Mike Burch led in the 1990s, made by effective leaders hoping to bring the sport into more schools. Title IX, like the wars Hastert helped rush us into, the restrictive social policies he helped enact, and his general pandering to the lowest common denominator, all have been proven backward and reductive.
The Hastert case should serve as a wake-up call to our community. Now is the time to dispel with the honoring of characters carrying false promises. The Ponzi schemers and liars, the all-show-and-no-content bullshit artists trying to make a name for themselves on the backs of our community. Ignore them and we will make them irrelevant. Instead, look closer at the good people we still have in the sport and let them be our emotional leaders. With the Olympics coming up, it won't be difficult to find a new batch of heroes to follow.
To your questions …
Q: As a former Pennsylvania wrestler I've taken great pride in Penn State's surge to the top wrestling program in the nation. Lehigh, Edinboro, Lock Haven, Pitt, F&M and others have done their best in past years to represent PA on the college level, but it took Sanderson at Penn State to bring it all home. And when Sanderson took the Penn State job he went out of his way to say that Pennsylvania is the heart of the nation's wrestling and he was going focus on recruiting in-state, which he has done successfully (Ed Ruth, Zain Retherford, Jason Nolf, Nico Megaludis).
So that set up is a long-winded way of asking what happened with Spencer Lee and Gavin Teasdale? They are two world-class products of Pennsylvania wrestling, so why did they end up going to Iowa? Can you shed some light on the situation? And I'm not buying the rationale that Penn State was full up with Suriano and didn't have room either on their roster or for scholarships. You don't pass up a kid like Spencer Lee … ever.
-- Steve S.
Foley: There are any number of reasons that Spencer Lee traveled to Iowa for college rather than stayed in Pennsylvania. My instinct tells me that Jody Strittmatter, who coaches both guys on the Young Guns, influenced their decision to go to Iowa. However, I am almost as certain that Strittmatter wasn't heavy-handed about the approach, and rather these kids just grew up knowing about their coach's Iowa roots, hearing stories and maybe envisioning themselves in the singlet.
Coach Sanderson probably didn't go down without a fight, but the reality is that these guys probably saw much less opportunity to start right away at Penn State than they did at Iowa. You mentioned Suriano, but there are others in the room waiting to get their chance. Maybe that was something the duo chose to ignore. It's also possible that they wanted to wrestle together in college and Iowa was the best fit for that situation.
Coach Sanderson is smart enough to realize missing out on one or two recruits doesn't sink a program. However, if this somehow continues to happen, then there is something with which Penn State fans can finally start to worry about.
Q: Haley Augello's rise has been incredible. I have been very impressed with her. Do you see her as a potential Olympic medalist in Rio?
-- Mike C.
Haley Augello gets her hand raised after a victory over Victoria Anthony in the finals of the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Iowa City (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)She also looked solid in Mongolia, beating her first four opponents before falling in the finals to the North Korean. That loss might be a bad bell-weather as the North Korean has seen underwhelming results versus much of Asia and Europe.
My guess is that Haley can earn a bronze if landing in the right position. She's going to have a very tough time against Mariya Stadnyk, Eri Tosaka and Sun Yanan. All three have shown the ability to wrestle at a level above the rest of the girls at 48 kilos.
MULTIMEDIA HALFTIME
Link: Take the money and run
Not aimed at everyone, but if anyone wants to surf, train and have a great time, Bali MMA is owned by former college wrestlers.
Link: Let's eat
Dagestan Training Camp
Q: What do you think our chances are for qualifying the remaining weight classes at the last Olympic Qualifier? Specifically, with Frank Molinaro, do you think criteria wins at the Trials mean we don't have our best foot forward to qualify the weight class or medal in Rio?
-- G.H.
Foley: As someone pointed out to me at the 1st World Olympic Qualifier in Mongolia, the system seems to be working out pretty well. With the notable exception of Hamid Soryan of Iran, almost all the top wrestlers in the world are qualified and the best from each nation seem to also be included in the Olympic roster.
Molinaro is the least experienced on the roster and faced a wrestler in Yakup Gor who has placed at the World Championships. Still, he managed to come pretty darn close to pulling off that upset and possibly finding a path to qualification. As it was, he lost a heartbreaker.
In my opinion, Molinaro is better than 50/50 to qualify in Istanbul. Most of the heavy hitters have qualified and any shuffling by the remaining countries will probably not reap positive outcomes.
As for the women, Tamyra Mensah should be qualifying. There is an enormous amount of talent that hasn't yet been realized, but once she sees what others do there is no limit to what she can achieve. Kelsey Campbell didn't look great in Mongolia, but she's wrestled plenty of international tournaments and could bring some veteran grit with her to Turkey.
The Greco-Roman qualification will be the toughest. RaVaughn Perkins took bronze in Mongolia, but lost in the true third-place match. His style may not lend itself to success in Europe where many more classic style enthusiasts will show up from smaller cash-strapped countries. Jesse Thielke can get the job done but needs to close out matches more effectively in Istanbul than he did in Mongolia. Joe Rau didn't show much in the first qualifier, leaving many question marks about what will happen in Turkey.
Q: How do wrestling fans outside of the United States view Kyle Snyder? As a one-hit wonder?
-- Mike C.
Foley: Everyone has an opinion on who is legit and who isn't, but I think it's universally accepted that Kyle Snyder is not a flash in the pan. He wrestles with the very best in the world while simultaneously wrestling a collegiate season. That's not unnoticed by the Russians, Iranians or other opponents. This past week in Mongolia I heard a lot of inquiries about his position on the team, as many thought that the USA would still send Jake Varner given his Olympic gold medal.
More importantly however, when Snyder's name comes up it's usually always framed in the question of if he will win the Olympics. That's a sign that most think he's at the top of the heap.
Request of the Week
By Dexter H.
I'm writing because I want to conclude the chapter with a brief discussion of the way wrestling has proven a common cultural practice between United States servicemen in the military and the local communities where they are stationed. I know that many of our servicemen and women have had the chance to engage in wrestling (formally and informally) while stationed overseas, and I wanted to see if any of your readers might be interested in contacting me to discuss their experiences of either training or competing with local Afghan, Iraqi, Kuwaiti or other communities while stationed overseas. For example, I know that the Army 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division hosted a Palawan (Afghan wrestling) tournament on FOB Wilson in Kandahar Province back in 2012. I'm also aware of our servicemen wrestling when stationed in Europe and the Pacific. I'm wondering if any readers might be able to give me some insight into their wrestling experiences abroad so that I can speak to how wrestling continues to cross cultural boundaries and connect peoples globally, even in times of international conflict.
If you wouldn't mind, could you plug this in your mailbag section to see if I can find some informants for the closing of this article? I can be reached at dex@berkeley.edu.
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