When Stanford announced they were cutting their program in July 2020, it was like getting punched in the gut.

Growing up in Santa Cruz, Palo Alto was a hop, skip, and a jump away. A 45 minute drive “over the hill” puts you onto Stanford’s beautiful campus. The weather is always nice, the architecture is beautiful (they are almost always building something there), and there is a strong feeling of excellence that resonated with me at 14 years old. 

In my freshman year of high school, my coach coordinated a trip to go watch Stanford host Northwestern in early November before our season started.

I vividly remember watching Ryan Mango battle against #2 ranked Brandon Precin at 125 pounds and lose a close one in a packed house at Burnham Pavilion.

Surrounded by 1500 people passionate about wrestling, watching a dude dressed as a tree throw out t-shirts every time a Stanford wrestler got a takedown did not just make me an instant fan of Stanford wrestling… It instantly made me want to wear cardinal and black and experience that environment from the wrestling mat.

I remember talking to my coach about it on the way home. He laughed and simply said “How? Your grades are… (expletive).”

Well that hit home. 

I had become indifferent about school since moving to Santa Cruz from Illinois in the 7th grade. For me to reach my goal of wrestling at Stanford, I needed to see school and wrestling from a different perspective. I needed to backwards map from my goal and really figure out how I was going to get there.

Everything changed.

I started attending Sunnyvale Wrestling Club in addition to training for my high school team to find more partners and get a different coaching perspective.

I joined all of the on-campus clubs that I could to build my academic resume.

I went to the Stanford Intensive Camp twice.

Most importantly… I began taking Honors and AP courses my Sophomore year. My GPA jumped from a 2.5 to a 3.8 (I could not figure out Chemistry). 

While that still wasn’t good enough to get into Stanford, I was fortunate enough to walk on at CSU Bakersfield, eventually earning the starting spot and a scholarship.

Sure enough I had the opportunity to wrestle in Burnham Pavilion my RS-Junior year, the same place my dream of wrestling in college started… but wearing blue and gold… It felt like a full-circle moment.

All of this flashed through my mind when I read the news Stanford was cutting their program. I thought about the impact that cutting the program was going to have on not just the team, but the greater wrestling community. All of those kids that won’t be inspired like I was to reach a little further for something, won’t have that opportunity.

Fortunately for everyone, Stanford Wrestling was KEPT. The wrestling community fought to keep it.

6 years later… the program finishes 6th in the 2026 NCAA tournament on the backs of National Champion, Aden Valencia, and All-Americans Nico Provo, Tyler Knox, and Angelo Posada (Stanford was without two-time All American Hunter Garvin and NCAA Qualifier Lorenzo Norman due to injury) The program competed against other teams that have a significantly higher budget. 

We live in the world of the transfer portal and NIL… All-Americans in wrestling could get a potentially six figure deal by entering the portal and then signing an NIL agreement with a big budget team that has spots to fill in their line-up.

Stanford has had four wrestlers enter the transfer portal after graduating early. Their names are familiar: Lorenzo Norman, Tyler Knox, Hunter Garvin, and Nico Provo.

However, Knox, Gavin, and Provo all decided to pull out of the portal and stay at Stanford. Entering the portal usually means you want to leave, but these two All-Americans decided to stay.

Why?

Stanford has built a strong network of community members that want to see the program succeed. The reason we have seen these guys make decisions to stay can be a combination of the following factors: strong financial efforts by Stanford alum and donors to keep their main returning point scorers through NIL deals, Stanford’s powerful team culture, and the opportunity to bring a team trophy next season to the west coast (would be the first team trophy since the 1996 CSUB team).

Head Coach Chris Ayres (2026 Coach of the Year) and company have been able to rebuild Stanford into a wrestling powerhouse that will be gunning to make even more waves next season, despite not being in the ball park financially of the other top 10 programs in the country.

It is hard not to be a fan of the Cardinal of Stanford (FYI color not the bird).

Bryan Battisto

@bryanbattisto X / Instagram / Facebook