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H I S T O R Y TRAIL BLAZERS Long before Cael Sanderson began winning titles, Penn State spearheaded an Eastern uprising. Here's how the West was conquered | N o matter how many NCAA wrestling championships Penn State wins under the coaching of Cael Sanderson and his successors, nothing will ever compare to the first one in 1953 when Charlie Speidel's Nittany Lions became the first Eastern team to win the title. With Sanderson's back-to-back championships in 2010 and 2011, Penn State remains the only Eastern college to win the team crown in a sport dominated by schools from the heartland, particularly Oklahoma State and Iowa. Yet 1953 will always stand out, primarily because of the unique circumstances involving Penn State's participation, but also because nearly everything in life was different then, including the collegiate wrestling world. For starters, Penn State won the championship before the home crowd at Rec Hall, something only Indiana in 1932 had previously done since the NCAA tournament began in 1928. The Lions had not come close to the title except in 1951 when they finished third with 16 points behind champion Oklahoma (24) and Oklahoma State (23). In fact, only once in that 25-year span had an Eastern team finished second. That was in 1938 when Lehigh was runner-up to Oklahoma State, 1915. Ironically, that year also was the second time Penn State was the site of the NCAA event following the first in 1930. To fully appreciate what the championship meant to the Penn State community in 1953, one needs to go back to those earlier tournaments. Except for his years in the Navy from 1942-46 (during which he saw combat as an officer in the Pacific), Speidel had been head coach of the wrestling team since 1927. His teams had won four Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association championships since 1936 but only two since he had returned from World War II: 1951 and '52. So, in 1930, Speidel's team caused hardly a ripple in the collegiate wrestling universe. Lehigh was the Eastern power at the time, and the NCAA wanted to hold its third tournament there as a way of attracting more attention to the sport from the powerful and influential Eastern newspapers and magazines. However, Leigh's gymnasium wasn't big enough in 1930. So Penn State was chosen as the host site because of its new gymnasium, named Recreation Hall, which had opened in January 1929. It had a seating capacity of

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