Wrestling Makes Strides As Popular Sport in North Dakota

The Forum, Fargo, North Dakota

By Eugene Fitzgerald
The Forum, Fargo, North Dakota, December 19, 1958

Make no mistake about it, wrestling will be North Dakota’s No. 2 winter sport, the participant or spectator variety.

I watched part of Wednesday’s dual match between the NDAC Bison and the Valley City State Teachers College Vikings at Valley City Wednesday night.

The Bison-Viking match followed the North Dakota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference basketball game between the Vikings and the Bottineau Forestry Lumberjacks.

Many of the people who had come to see the basketball game stayed on to watch the wrestling.

The Bison and the Vikings are probably the pioneers in wrestling among North Dakota Colleges.

The day is coming – and probably very soon – when wrestling will attract people because of its interest. Most spectators who watch the wrestlers now are present because the matches are staged following varsity basketball games.

But that’s not true in Iowa, where wrestling has been a popular spectator sport for many years in colleges and high school.

It’s safe to guess that intercollegiate and interscholastic wrestling will attract spectators on the merits of the sports. It will probably be staged on Friday and Saturday afternoons, instead of continuing on to late night hours following basketball games.

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Wrestling was introduced in most colleges because football coaches, especially, felt it was a good conditioner for gridders during the off season. It has no equal in this respect.

Wrestling has no rival for fairness. Contestants are matched according to weight, contestants usually being nearly equal physically in most respects. It’s not like basketball where the tall man has an advantage over the short player.

There’s nothing particularly new about wrestling, except that it was introduced in this area as an intercollegiate and interscholastic sport only recently by comparative standards with its long popularity in Iowa and Oklahoma.

Intercollegiate and interscholastic wrestling is not to be confused with the hippodroming as most people know the hippodroming pro sport.

Wrestling in colleges and high schools is divided into three periods of three minutes each, with points awarded for accomplishments, such as a takedown, an escape, a pin and other categories.

The intercollegiate and interscholastic sport differs from the pro variety with its heroes and villains. It’s also unlike the pro sport, which died out because of the lack of action as contestants sought advantages with tiring holds while virtually motionless on the floor.