Blue White Illustrated

eye doing so. ... They will know they are in a fight." The best way to comprehend the mood on campus is through the Collegian and its all-out coverage before and after the tournament. Just as the preliminaries were under way that Friday, the Collegian, which published Tuesday through Saturday, announced it would publish a special four-page Sunday edition, unprecedented since the student newspaper started in 1887. Fans filled Rec Hall each day. Penn State took a 2-1 lead over Michigan in the morning preliminary round, but by the end of the afternoon session, the Lions were tied with Oklahoma State, 3-3, and had four finalists in Saturday's semifinals: the Leymre brothers, Don Frey at 147 pounds and Hud Samson at 191 pounds. Dick Leymre and Samson reached the evening finals, with Penn State battling Oklahoma for the lead. As Jake Highton reported, some 6,000 fans "made a solid mass from the balcony track all the way down to the mat side. Grizzled Nittany habitués of Rec Hall said it was the largest [crowd] ever." "LIONS WIN NCAA CROWN" proclaimed the large, two-tiered headline in the Collegian's special Sunday edition. Penn State actually clinched the match Saturday night when Oklahoma's 123-pound favorite, Don Reece, was pinned by Minnesota's Dick Mueller. By that time, Dick Leymre had lost a 7-5 decision to Michigan's Norvard Nalan, but his brother Joe and Maurey had finished third earlier in the consolations. Sampson, the popular 191-pound senior, punctuated the historic night with a dramatic pin of West Chester's Chuck Weber 4:15 into the match. That gave Penn State 21 points to Oklahoma's 15. Cornell had 13, Northwestern 12 and Oklahoma State 11. Samson's victory also made it a record five individual champions for Eastern schools. "The East is risen. Hallelujah!" wrote Highton in a front-page column. Charlie Speidel's prediction 15 years earlier had come to fruition; Mohammed had conquered the mountain. But it would take 57 years for Penn State to scale that mountain again. The start of something big T he wrestling environment on the Penn State campus in the 1950s after the team won its first NCAA championship was much different than it is today. Of course, a lot has changed at Penn State – and in the world – since then. What sticks out with Nittany Lion wrestling seven decades ago was its immense campus-wide popularity and the dedication of the student body, particularly the fraternities. When the wrestling team became the first Eastern team to win the NCAA title in the 1952-53 school year, enrollment was officially 11,529. By 1958-59, it was up to just 14,786 – a far cry from the 40,000-plus in the past decade. Furthermore, it was predominantly male, with men outnumbering women by a three-to-one ratio. With only two drinking establishments in State College and entertainment limited basically to three movie theaters and one television station broadcasting in black-andwhite from Altoona, campus social life centered around fraternities and sororities, Penn State sports and the frequent appearances of nationally known big bands and jazz groups in concert or special semiformal dances at Rec Hall. Then there were the occasional planned or impromptu "panty raids," in which dozens of male students, sometimes hundreds, would break into and/or lay siege to the women's dormitories on a weeknight just before or after the curfew that required the women inside by 10 o'clock. Women willingly gave up their undergarments to the raiders, throwing them out the windows and then cheered loudly when some of the men put them on over their own shirts and trousers. It was a juvenile nationwide craze on college campuses in the '50s and seemingly in all good fun when compared to the destructive alcohol-fueled riots instigated by today's college generation. In fact, on the Friday the NCAA wrestling tournament opened at Rec Hall in late March 1953, a front-page story in The Daily Collegian, right below the five-column headline touting the big event, reported on an apparently planned panty raid for the following Monday. The dean of men warned the students that "stern disciplinary action" would be taken. That panty raid never came off, perhaps because the students heeded the warning or maybe because they were still basking in the glory of the wrestling team's historic national championship Saturday night. Panty raids were still in vogue when I walked on campus as a naïve freshman in September 1955, but they were fading by the time I graduated in June 1959. It was during those four years that I not only became a big fan of the wrestling team but also covered it for the Collegian and met one of Penn State's true wrestling aficionados: Phil Petter. In late November 1957, my sophomore year, I was assigned to cover varsity wrestling for the Collegian. Phil was a junior and the team's first assistant manager. We hit it off instantly, and he took me under his wing. I was a bigger basketball fan at the time. I had covered Penn State's freshman basketball team the previous year, and I was biding my time until I could get the basketball beat if I became the assisSEE PRATO NEXT PAGE

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