Scattered underneath Gene Mills’ desk are Asics wrestling shoes, some with a matching shoe, some without. Leaning on shelves, there are a few grappling trophies. On his desk, papers are stacked up.

But when he looked for a book, he peeled back a group of papers concealing the 75th anniversary Syracuse wrestling media guide. He found it with ease. Mills put two hands on the guide and longingly looked it up and down.

For the mats on the cover to be rolled out. For the 6,000 or so fans he said would come to watch SU’s biggest matches. For Syracuse to once again be seen by New York high school wrestlers as a destination.

SU announced the wrestling program would eventually go defunct unless it could raise $2 million in 1997. The program never quite got there. Two coaches took over in the program’s last three years. By 2001, the program had trimmed down, but still couldn’t make weight. It’s never wrestled in the 15 years since.

Wrestling is one of the few sports where all the combatants are placed on an even plane — the same weight, individual against individual. To Mills, a statute for equality, Title IX, was an excuse to cut the most equal sport.

Most of Mills’ problems have been dealt with on a mat, and he was awfully good at resolving them. He won national championships in 1979 and 1981 and holds the NCAA record for pins with 107. But having his only chance at a gold medal taken away and having a friend killed have prepared him better than any challenger on the mat ever could for a battle he will have to fight to the bitter end:

To revive the Syracuse wrestling program.

Mills has contacted SU’s athletic department about bringing the team back, but for now, the only trace of his time with Syracuse wrestling in his office is in his hands. Its stiffness suggests it doesn’t get cracked open often, the memories it holds repressed under all the papers.

“It’s my only copy,” Mills says, dropping his typically jubilant voice, “Be careful with it.”

•••

Mills lifted his opponent’s head high. Slam, into the mat. This man should have been out cold.

Mills lifted his opponent’s head high. Slam, into the mat. This man’s neck should have snapped.

Mills lifted his opponent’s head high. Slam, into the mat. This time, though, Mills drove his opponent over his head and pinned him.

“I don’t know why the guy didn’t break his neck,” said Chris Campbell, a 1980 Olympic wrestling teammate of of Mills. “It was one of the most violent, horrific, ass-whoopings that I’ve ever seen.”

That “ass-whooping” was one of many in a long line of them for Mills and there should have been more. In 1980, Mills pinned all but one opponent in the Tbilisi tournament, a wrestling contest as tough or tougher than the Olympics. That match was called after Mills’ opponent stalled too many times.

“There was a time where he may have become the greatest, most dominant wrestler that ever lived,” said Mark Schultz, a 1984 Olympic gold medalist.

Mills redshirted the 1980 college season, which would have been his senior season, to prepare for the Olympics, but President Jimmy Carter made the U.S. boycott the event, which was held in the Soviet Union. A friend of Mills’ had moved to Syracuse to train with him for the Olympics. They would wake up at 5 a.m., run just more than two miles at Green Lakes State Park a minimum of three times and intersperse the running with wrestling drills every day. After, the two would wrestle each other, eat and wrestle again.

At the 1981 World Cup the next year, Mills faced reigning Olympic gold medalist Anatoli Beloglazov. In the weeks leading up to the match, Mills couldn’t work out because he had prickly heat rash, a condition where skin feels as if its burning because sweat glands are blocked.

The night before he was supposed to weigh in for the match with Beloglazov, he tried to work out again. No heat rashes. Mills burned off 18 pounds in 12 hours. During that match, though, he kept tripping from exhaustion. Mills still won the match on a tiebreaker.

“I wrestled like dog crap,” Mills said 35 years later.

After the match, Beloglazov waved his arm at the decision. Two weeks later, Mills faced Beloglazov again, beating him worse than before.

Yet, Mills winces at the thought of the Olympics, almost as if someone just put him in an arm bar and ran it up his back.

“I wanted to kill (President Carter),” Mills said. “Who the heck was he to take away my dreams I busted my ass for? I pinned everybody in the world and then I lost to a peanut farmer? Put me on the mat with him. See how he comes out of that. It was bad. I couldn’t think straight.”

•••

“F*cking du Pont!” Mills yelled.

While he was eating a team dinner at Spaghetti Warehouse, a restaurant in downtown Syracuse, on Jan. 26, 1996, the general manager told Mills his friend and former Olympic teammate Dave Schultz had died.

Mills rushed to the television nearest to the bar. His heart sank when CNN confirmed what he already knew. John du Pont had killed Schultz. He had just talked to him that morning.

du Pont started Foxcatcher Farms in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, in the mid 1980s, housing Olympic wrestlers to train together. Mark Schultz trained at Foxcatcher first and quit by the time Dave started training there. Mills tried to go to Foxcatcher as little as possible and estimated he traveled there about six times.

A married couple that was friends with Mills would take care of du Pont because he’d get sick on international flights and doubled as videographers for USA Wrestling and Foxcatcher. The two prepared a bath for du Pont, ordered room service and du Pont fell asleep at a tournament in Bulgaria, Mills said. The two headed to Mills’ room, but du Pont found the couple after he woke up and yelled at them for not taking care of him, Mills said.

Mills relied on his physicality to deal with the problem. He belly-bumped du Pont to the ground and down the hallway, yelling at du Pont for shouting at his friends. Again it served Mills well.

The then-Syracuse assistant, Mills, had known the Schultz brothers for years and had roomed with Mark at the 1982 Tbilisi tournament. He was with Dave when his brother, Mark, had to cut 12 pounds in 45 minutes at the Olympic trials in 1988 in Pensacola, Florida. For the 45 minutes prior, Mark had slowly pedaled on the bike, not listening to Dave, so the older brother found Mills.

“Schultzy, you gotta get going,” Mills recalls saying when he got to Mark.

“I don’t give a f*ck,” Mills recalls Mark firing back.

For the next 45 minutes, Mills told Mark to pedal on a stationary bike like he was chasing a woman he was interested in. Mills pushed him until sweat poured out of his sweat pants, leaving a puddle on the ground.

Courtesy of Gene Mills

In 2014, “Foxcatcher,” a movie about the Schultzes’ ordeal with du Pont came out. Channing Tatum depicted Mark and Mark Ruffalo depicted Dave. Mills played a small part as a referee.

On the set, an actor approached Mills and started asking him if he could put him in a half nelson because the actor’s wrestling coach had taught him Mills’ half nelson series in high school.

Mills couldn’t decipher who he was talking to, but slowly it hit him. That looks like Dave. That’s Mark Ruffalo.

After the movie came out, longtime friend Tim Boda, Mills and others went to Ultimate Athletics, a gym Boda and Mills run. There they shared pictures and memories.

“After the movie came out, we came back here and shared some stories,” Boda said. “… he started crying in here after we watched the movie.”

•••

Twenty-two seasons after Mills arrived at Syracuse and 34 after Ed Carlin started coaching at SU, director of athletics Jake Crouthamel called Carlin and Mills into his office to tell them that the wrestling program would be cut. All three cried.

The two coaches passed the news to players, along with the devastation and tears. Most left the school for other wrestling programs.

Mills said he turned down an offer to be an associate athletic director at the time, because it would approve of what the university had done. Other universities offered him coaching positions. He did accept an offer from Crouthamel for the university to pay for a graduate degree and his salary while he took classes. Mills finished the teaching program in just more than a year, about than half the time it was supposed to take him.

That’s allowed him to teach and coach for almost the last 20 years. He has turned Phoenix into a solid program that competed at the Union-Endicott Duals, one of the most prestigious tournaments in New York. He decided to stay around Syracuse and coach at John C. Bridleborough (New York) High School in Phoenix, New York. He said he could help more kids and not uproot his family by coaching locally. But longtime friend Tim Boda added Mills also had a point to prove to SU.

“He truly thought they were going to bring it back,” Boda said. “In his heart, he was like, ‘You know what? They’re going to drop it for a few years, realize it was a mistake and bring it back.’ I still kind of think he’s in denial about it.”

Mills, however, has spoken with director of athletics Mark Coyle and had a phone call with assistant director of athletics Kimberly Keenan-Kirkpatrick. They told him Syracuse wouldn’t be adding another sport right now.

“I think he’s been kind of silent on it,” Boda said. “… He’s not confrontational. I think if he got too engaged in bringing it back, that would change.”

•••

A Quonset hut in the Manley Field House parking lot served as the wrestling dorm when Mills attended SU. Before Mills got to Syracuse, wrestlers installed sheet rock, carpeting and heaters to make the rooms inside it. When he was at SU, wrestlers climbed to the water towers behind Manley Field House and spray painted “Building Boys” on them.

While others laid the physical foundation for the program, Mills’ two national championships and being a four-time All-American added to the metaphorical one.

SU eventually did level the Quonset hut a short time after Mills graduated.

Now, Mills is building for a program that doesn’t exist. He believes it’s time for the program to come back. Coyle is from wrestling-crazy Iowa and worked at Minnesota when the program won back-to-back national championships. Boise State came on as a strong wrestling program when Coyle was there.

Mills had a blueprint figured out. Syracuse would announce the addition of a men’s and women’s wrestling program at the NCAA championships at Madison Square Garden on March 17-19. If SU added a women’s program, Mills said it would be the 40th in the country, bringing women’s wrestling one step closer to becoming a Division I sport.

“What better place to announce that?” Mills said. “… But they said they had too many messes to clean up right now.”

Kids start shuffling by his office. The father of a wrestler has stopped by. This father moved his family from Ohio to Phoenix, New York, for his son to wrestle for Mills. The father said Syracuse was known for two athletes — Jim Brown and Gene Mills — when he grew up.

More kids shuffle by to the locker room. The father said these kids don’t appreciate just who they’re taking lessons from and going to wrestling practice with. But Mills had his chance at Olympic gold taken from him. The SU program was shelved around the time some of his students were born.

It’s slipped beyond the generation of students attending Syracuse and soon could slip by the adults, too. While 15 years have fogged the program’s history, 15 more could bury it.

A few more stragglers run into the locker room while some have started to empty out of it. The clock ticks toward 12:50 p.m. Time winds down. On Mills’ legacy at Syracuse and the potential for reclaiming the program.

But for now, Gene Mills has to teach gym class.

Philip Elgie | Staff Photographer

Published on March 8, 2016 at 2:14 am

Contact Chris: cjlibona@syr.edu | @ChrisLibonati