Wabash College Athletics

When Max Servies took over leadership of the Wabash wrestling program, he posted his motto on the door to the wrestling room: Victory is Sweat. And over the years, scores and scores of Wabash men did a lot of sweating for Coach Servies — and a lot of winning, too. While it’s hard to name a specific team as Max’s very finest, we’ll start by inducting into the Hall of Fame the 1980-81 Wrestling Team. This squad of mat-men posted a 23-0 dual meet record, won the Little State Champions, and five members of the team captured Little State titles. Max wrote this about the team in his book, Some Little Giants:
 
“The wrestlers defeated Notre Dame on January 17, the day the wrestling room went up in smoke. They defeated DePauw four times and Indiana Central once, won the unofficial Little State championship and GLCA tournament, and ran away with the NCAA Division III Mideast Regional.  This was the first undefeated season in wrestling since Keith Farrand’s 1955-56 inaugural "club" season, when Wabash went 3-0. Outstanding Little Giant wrestlers contributing to the undefeated season were Scott Douglas, freshman 126-pounder (19-8); Brian Graden, freshman 150-pounder (21-3-1); Tony Loe, 177 (18-4); Mark Magura, 142 (18-4); Kurt Pope, 134 (15-5-1); and John Rust, heavyweight (21-2).”