By Scott Farrell

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The National Collegiate Wrestling Association announced more of its continued growth as it expands closer to the 200-team mark. The NCWA approved four programs this summer, and at least five more are in the works as the 2015-16 season approaches.

Nowhere is the growth more pronounced than in the red-hot Pacific Northwest region, where the NCWA’s Northwest Conference will expand with the additions of the University of Oregon, and Grays Harbor College, in Aberdeen, Wash., on the coast southwest of Seattle. The Northwest Conference boasted its first national champion team last season when Washington State won the Division II title.

The remarkable expansion in the Northwest Conference has led to nine programs starting in the last three seasons. Grays Harbor will be led by veteran coach Phillip Pine, who also started and led NCWA programs at The Evergreen State College and South Puget Sound Community College in Washington state the past three seasons. The Chokers’ program will be run through its athletic department and compete in NCWA’s Division I. (A Choker is a term for a logger who attaches cables to the logs for later retrieval by skidders or skylines).

“(Pine) came to us (in June) with his idea of starting a program here, and within a month we had committed to make it happen,” said interim Athletic Director Tom Sutera in a release on the school’s website. “With Phillip’s excellent reputation and respect within the wrestling community, it was a lot easier to commit to the program. He is driven to be successful.”

Pine made quick work of assembling a team following the announcement, and already has 27 recruits on GHC’s initial roster, 22 of them coming from in-state high schools.

As for Oregon, the NCWA is returning wrestling to a campus that has not had a program since the Ducks closed their NCAA program following the 2007-08 season. The addition of Oregon gives the NCWA more programs on more Pacific-12 Conference campuses – six of them at Arizona, Oregon, UCLA, USC, Washington and Washington State – than its NCAA counterpart in the same conference.

“It’s exciting to know that our growth has more than tripled in the Northwest over the past 2-3 years,” said NCWA Executive Director Jim Giunta. “That region is ripe for even more growth. Judging by the response our newest programs have received, there’s a large market for collegiate wrestling in that region. We want the NCWA to fill that void and continue bringing wrestling back to those schools and communities.

Also of note is further expansion in wrestling’s heartland of Iowa and Illinois, as the University of Iowa will sponsor a club program with in the NCWA for the first time, along with Morthland College. The Iowa club, sponsored through the university’s student services department and independent of the school’s athletic department or another other Iowa wrestling club, will give dozens of wrestlers the opportunity to continue competing in the sport they love while going to their school of choice in one of the cradles of the sport. Iowa State joined the NCWA four years ago and continues to sponsor a club team, so the NCWA is now represented on two of the nation’s top wrestling campuses.

The Hawkeyes’ addition makes them the sixth club to start on one of the NCAA’s Big Ten Conference campuses, along with Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State and Rutgers. Iowa’s club will compete in Division II per NCWA rules that prohibit teams that have an existing program on campus that are members of another association (the NCAA in this case) in competing in Division I.

Morthland College of West Frankfort, Ill., has also joined for the 2015-16 season and will compete in Division I and the Great Plains Conference along with Iowa.

“That’s what we’re all about, creating opportunities to expand collegiate wrestling on campuses like these,” Giunta said. “We’re thankful that so many coaches and students are willing to take on the responsibilities of starting new programs. Great things are happening up there, and I’m sure it will continue with the leadership we have in place.”

Morthland is a member of the National Christian College Athletic Association in its other sports. The NCWA has a previous relationship of sorts with the NCCAA, as three of its teams joined the NCWA after the NCCAA discontinued sponsoring wrestling in 1998 and helped support what was still a fledgling NCWA.

Pensacola Christian won the 1999 and 2000 NCWA titles and placed in the top five every year from 1999-2003. Maranatha Baptist Bible College (in Wisconsin, and now called Maranatha Baptist University) and Baptist Bible College (Pa.) also joined in 1999, with Maranatha finishing fourth in 1999.