“Rome had its circuses, Spain its bullfights, America has football, and EMC has wrestling.” Well encapsulated in this quote from the March 7, 1969 issue of the Weather Vane, wrestling used to be the most popular sport on campus. Back then, EMU was EMC and instead of the Royals, EMC’s first sport’s teams took the title of the ‘Courtiers.’ According to an article by the April 30, 1965 issue of The Weather Vane, the ‘Courtier Matmen’ wrestled for the first time in a meet against Bridgewater College earlier that month. Wrestling continued at an informal level, until the 1996-1967 school year, when the team reached new levels as part of EMC’s rapid expansion of on-campus athletic opportunities.
That season also marked Glenn Metzler’s first year at EMC. During his four years as a “standout player” and as a student coach, Metzler would help make the wrestling team a force to be reckoned with as he and teammate Bob Bishop went undefeated season after season. Undeniably the best heavyweight wrestler in the history of the school, Metzler was awarded a spot on the Hall of Honor in 2005 (in a ceremony I also attended as a two year old).
“It was so new to a lot of people at the school at the time. It drew a lot of people. An awful lot of interest,” said Metzler. “Back then basketball was one of the main winter sports but we would have almost more people watching wrestling than basketball on campus. That’s how popular it became.” Wrestling’s popularity on campus is also evidenced by its sheer number of mentions in past issues of The Weather Vane. Nearly every issue from 1966-1971 recounts the exploits, record, or meets the team participated in. Metzler keeps a book filled with articles and pictures cut-out from the newspaper.
Undefeated as a wrestler at EMC, Metzler remembers many meets where the victorious college would come down to his match saying, “Wrestling is the sport where you’re out there by yourself. You can’t blame anyone else if you don’t perform. It’s very individualistic but it’s also a team sport.” Elizabeth (Betty) Metzler, his wife and fellow EMC alumni, remembers watching Metzler and the team play. “There was a real camaraderie among them.” She also remembered the reactions Metzler and the team would get, saying, “In his Junior year there were eight meets and he pinned [his opponent] in seven of them and had a decision in the other. People would come out to watch him pin other people. He was pretty well known for wrestling at the time at EMC. People still come up to him, even up here in Lancaster and say ‘yeah we remember you wrestling, you just went out there and pinned the guy’.”
In sportswriter Ken Lehman’s 1969 article, “Pretzel Agony,” an audience member is quoted reacting to the spectacle of wrestling. “I can hardly stand to watch,” says [a girl], staring intently at the mat where two wrestlers are twisted into a pretzel shape composition best entitled, ‘Agony.’” Lehman later goes on to write that “The kind of players a team has often determines the type of spectators it draws. EMC has some pretty exciting wrestlers, so they have some pretty excited wrestling fans.” Metzler is later described in the article as “the crowd’s favorite.” After Bishop and Metzler graduated in 1970 the wrestling program slowly began to dwindle in popularity, eventually being cut from the offered programs in 1979. Despite its brief run, wrestling had a significant impact on campus while it was there. Today however, little remains to testify to that impact. The Metzlers both still enjoy watching wrestling today, particularly Penn State. Both remember the sport at EMC fondly and were very helpful in putting this article together as was Jim Bishop’s 2005 article in Crossroads magazine, “Honoring a Gentle Giant.”
