Iowa wrestling: Jared Frayer loses appeal on Brent Metcalf match
Jared Frayer’s last-gasp attempt to wrestle a spot on the U.S. freestyle team away from Brent Metcalf is apparently dead.
The former Iowa strength and conditioning coach said Tuesday that he won’t take his challenge to a higher level after losing an appeal with USA Wrestling.
“It’s pretty much over and done with,” Frayer said. “It was more of something I had to do. It wasn’t something I really expected to win, I guess, but it was just to set the precedent that it’s (expletive) the way matches are being decided — mine or anybody’s. It’s just ridiculous the way things are being handled by Fila or whoever it may be.”
Metcalf defeated Frayer on June 12 in the best-of-three 145.5-pound championship series at the World Team Trials in Council Bluffs. The two-time NCAA champion from Iowa earned a ticket to September’s World Championships in Moscow when he claimed the decisive point in the series with a rare defensive point out of the leg clinch after the wrestlers previously had been cautioned for improper starts.
Frayer and his coaches immediately protested that Metcalf should have been cautioned again, but the ruling was upheld after a video review. Frayer filed a grievance with USA Wrestling after the tournament.
“Our bylaws call for the executive director to (lead) an investigation and take steps to settle it without delay, which I did.” USA Wrestling executive director Rich Bender said. “Through my investigation, I determined it was a field of play decision.”
Bender said United States Olympic Committee bylaws state that under field of play decisions, the final decision of a referee “shall not be reviewable subject to complaint procedures, unless it’s a decision outside of the authority of the referee, a product of fraud, corruption, partiality, or any misconduct of the part of the referee.”
“I determined it clearly fell into the category of a field of play decision and notified (Frayer) that the match will stand,” Bender said.
Frayer, a 31-year-old Wisconsin assistant, won the first match 1-0, 1-0. Metcalf came back to even the series with a 3-0, 3-4, 2-1 win in the second bout. They split the first two periods of the decisive bout with Frayer winning the opening period 6-0 and Metcalf taking the second 4-0 before a scoreless third period left the match and the series riding on the outcome of a leg clinch.
Frayer won the right to take the offensive position after a red ball matching his singlet color was pulled out of a matside bag.
Frayer said he’d like to see USA Wrestling get away from the leg clinch in the future in a similar circumstance and let matches continue until a wrestler scores on his feet.
“It’s not like we weren’t scoring points,” he said. “At some point, there was going to be a point scored. It’s not like we were going to sit there and let it go 20 minutes and somebody wasn’t going to score. And it’s not like the fans didn’t want to see that.”
USA Wrestling has tweaked its rules in the past and gone outside of the guidelines set by Fila, wrestling’s international governing body. At the 2004 Olympic Trials, Dennis Hall and Brandon Paulson wrestled for nearly 17 minutes in the final match of their 121-pound Greco-Roman championship series after USA Wrestling employed a rule at the tournament allowing matches to go to an unlimited sudden death period if all criteria were tied at the end of a three-minute overtime period.
“I don’t know if I could see us getting away from the rules, (but) we have made modifications in the past,” Bender said. “We’ll continue to look at the situation and make the best possible decision we can for what’s best for our team and winning medals at the World Championships.”
Category: Wrestling
