Stanford wrestling entered the Pacific-10 Championships with high hopes, in search of their first Conference title in team history. And while a rocky finish to the first day of competition on Sunday precluded the Cardinal from achieving that goal, third-year head coach Kerry McCoy’s squad nevertheless rallied back and came as close as they possibly could, coming in second in the program’s best finish ever.

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Jeff Keacher

Junior Luke Feist (left) lost in the first round of the tournament, but bounced back to take third place at the Pac-10 Championships and earn a crucial point for Stanford in the team race.

The tournament opened with a strong initial showing for the Cardinal, but by the end of the first day’s action, only No. 6 senior Tanner Gardner at 125 pounds remained in the championship bracket and Stanford sat a disappointing sixth in the overall standings. It was do-or-die for the Cardinal on Sunday, and the team knew it.

“The thing is, we’ve been trying to build this team attitude for a long time, and this weekend it all finally came together, which is when it should,” McCoy said. “The guys stepped up and supported each other.

“After the disappointments on Sunday night it would have been really easy for our guys to roll over and say, ‘You know what, we’re done. Our best guys got beat. We’ll just roll over and go away,’” he continued. “But we had a team meeting, and I didn’t really want to blow it out of proportion, but I just said, ‘Hey, this is where we’re at, we’re in sixth place, and that’s it, bottom line, I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just go out and do what we can do.’ And it was actually guys on the team, Tanner in particular, who stepped up and said, ‘No, we can do this.’”

And so they did, as the Cardinal romped through the final day of competition en route to its second place team finish behind only Boise State, a result that saw five individual Stanford wrestlers earn their way to the NCAA Championships in St. Louis, Mo. later this month.

The format of the Pac-10 tournament is such that the top three finishers in a weight class are all guaranteed spots in the national tournament, with coaches selecting eight additional “wild card” winners to make the trip. With all Stanford wrestlers but Gardner out of the championship bracket, then, the stakes were high as Cardinal athletes needed to be perfect on the day to assure themselves of a chance at an NCAA bid.

No. 9 redshirt senior Josh Zupancic bounced back beautifully in the consolation bracket at 157 pounds after a disappointing loss on day one to earn a third place conference finish as did redshirt junior Luke Feist at 174 pounds. Redshirt freshman Lucas Espericueta and sophomore Zach Giesen, meanwhile, fell in their consolation finals matches to finish fourth at 149 and 184 pounds, respectively, but were each awarded wild card spots, qualifying them for the NCAA tournament.

Gardner, meanwhile, was perfect in Eugene, winning his first two matches by fall before rallying in the finals to come out on top, 7-6, over second-seeded Anthony Robles of Arizona State. Gardner’s record on the year improved to an astounding 38-1, as the Berryton, Kans. native also set new Stanford records for career victories (140) and pins in a single season (19) en route to his second consecutive conference title — a feat which no Stanford wrestler has achieved in over two decades. If Gardner can repeat as an All-American at the national tournament for the third consecutive year, he would be the first Cardinal wrestler ever to do so.

In calling Gardner the “poster child” for the Stanford program going forward, however, McCoy was also quick to point out the total team effort that was required for Stanford to earn its highest finish in program history. Even wrestlers who didn’t qualify for the NCAA field made big contributions to Stanford’s overall score.

One such example was Kyle Barrett, a freshman at 165 pounds who was forced into the starting lineup after an injury ended redshirt sophomore Peter Miller’s season. Despite only wrestling in eight collegiate matches prior to the tournament, Barrett went 3-2 against the best of the Pac-10 to finish fourth in the conference.

Despite the program record finish, however, make no mistake, McCoy and his team still recognize just how far they have to go.

“It’s kind of funny because I’ve said this to our team but our goal was to win the Pac-10,” he said. “But if you’re not going to win, you can’t do better than finishing second. So it’s huge in that our guys stepped up and performed at a high level. We had some ups and downs, but the biggest thing is that we continued to break records and set new levels of excellence for this program.”

For the five wrestlers making the trip to the NCAA tournament, the action will begin on March 20 at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis.

Also notable was the announcement that volunteer assistant coach Matt Gentry’s ‘05 will join the Canadian Olympic team competing in Beijing this summer. Gentry finished third at the Pan Am Games in Colorado Springs, Colo. on Sunday to secure the honor. The former Cardinal standout is the only NCAA Champion in program history, winning the title at 157 pounds in 2004; he secured his chance to make a bid for an Olympic medal on the same day his career victories record at Stanford was broken by Gardner.