As the majority of the nation sits embroiled in the madness of the NCAA Division I basketball tournament, Gettysburg College remembers an amazing run in the national wrestling tournament five decades ago.
 
The 1960s were full of amazing athletes and outstanding accomplishments on the Gettysburg campus. The baseball team won the Middle Atlantic Conference University Division title and went off to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 1962. Football claimed the MAC title and the Lambert Memorial Cup in 1964 and 1966, respectively. Ron Warner '62 and Bob "Wheaties" Parker '62 were torching nets on the basketball court, while Don Ardinger '67 and Bob Linders '64 were shattering records on the track.
 
In the midst of all those great exploits stands a man who gained unprecedented attention at Gettysburg, whether he wanted it or not. Wrestler Joseph Bavaro '66, Island Park, N.Y. native, was a two-time NCAA College Division champion, earning his first title five decades ago. He raised the bar for the wrestling program and he helped put Gettysburg on the national map during the 1960s.
 

Bavaro was a late-comer to the sport of wrestling. His friends prompted him to give it a try one day during his junior year of high school and he quickly picked it up.
 
"I moved to Long Island as a sophomore and then my junior year a couple people I knew asked me to wrestle," remembered Bavaro, a graduate of Oceanside High School. "It was one of those freak things. People have talent in certain things. I was lucky enough to fall into wrestling."
 
He soon drew the attention of some of the top coaches around Long Island, including Frank "Sprig" Gardner, legendary coach from Mepham High School. From 1936 to 1958, Gardner coached 106 sectional champions and led Mepham to an overall record of 254-5-1 and 40 tournament titles. In 1962, Director of Athletics Hen Bream '24 decided the wrestling program needed a lift and Gardner was just the man to do it.
 
"Hen Bream knew how well wrestling was perceived here in Gettysburg," recalled long-time Sports Information Director Bob Kenworthy '59. "Sprig Gardner helped turn the program around."
 
With Gardner came a handful of wrestlers from Long Island, including Bavaro and Steve Baumann '66 from Oceanside, Valley Stream's Joseph O'Donnell '66, and Amityville's Toby Mullin '66 among others. By 1965, eight of the 19 men listed on the varsity roster hailed from Long Island.
 
Bavaro had other options on his plate at the time, including an opportunity to attend and wrestle at national power Penn State University. But he opted for the smaller confines of the Gettysburg campus based on its academic reputation and the lure of wrestling for a legend like Gardner.
 
Freshmen did not compete at the varsity level in those days so Bavaro quietly strolled his way to five wins in as many matches in 1962-63. In his first season on the varsity team in 1963-64, the sophomore quickly grabbed the attention of his competitors, dropping only one match during the regular season and knocking off highly-rated foe Al Lilley from Temple. Bavaro's strengths were his speed and balance and he always seemed to be ready for whatever his opponent threw at him.
 
"There were some other good wrestlers on that team, but Joe was the outstanding one," said Ray Reider '51, who served as Gardner's assistant until assuming head coaching duties in 1964-65. "He was much better at countering whatever somebody tried to do. His best move was an inside wing. Even though people knew it was coming, he was always able to execute it."
 
Bavaro wound up third at 147 pounds at the 1964 MAC University Division Championship, but that result only made him more motivated for the following year.
 
The 1964-65 wrestling campaign featured one of the greatest performances in the history of Bullets athletics. Bavaro debuted with a pin against Juniata and he continued to pin his opponents to the mat for two more months. Fans crowded into Bream Gym to see how fast the grappler could pin his opponent and following a match against Western Maryland on Feb. 10, he had reeled off 10 consecutive pins to start the year, breaking the previous record held by Mike Pacilio '61.

 

After a perfect regular season, Bavaro marched his way through the conference championship held at Bream Gym, winning each match by eight points or more. He was named Most Outstanding Performer of the event – the first Bullet to earn the award since Jim Spangler '52 in 1952.
 
"I didn't really know I was going to be that good," said Bavaro. "My only expectation was to win the MACs because I felt I should have won the title as a sophomore. I had no idea about nationals at that time."
 
With his performance, Bavaro earned a spot in the NCAA College Division Championship hosted by the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colo. He was only the second Bullet to compete in a national event, following Pacilio's appearance in 1959. Instead of the usual conference opponents, Bavaro now faced some of the top athletes from around the nation at the College Division level.
 
"They all came from tremendous wrestling schools," recalled Kenworthy, citing institutions like California Polytechnic Institute and Coe College. "Now we had to ask ourselves if Joe was as good as some of these guys out there. You really had to wonder if he's capable of doing this at that level."
 
Hailing from a small school in south-central Pennsylvania, Bavaro may have been overlooked at first – he wasn't even listed among the 117 names in the event's program. But he wasted no time in drawing attention. In his first two matches at 147 pounds, Bavaro easily handled Ron James from Northwest Missouri (11-4) and Bob Furlan from Northern Illinois (4-1). Both of those men would claim All-America status in future national championships.
 
In the title bout, Bavaro drew Cal Poly's Jim Teem, a University Division qualifier in 1964. Teem was unbeaten (19-0) heading into the title match and had posted three easy wins to open the College Division Championship.
 
Bavaro never blinked. He easily defeated Teem with a 6-2 decision to become Gettysburg's first national champion.
 

"I didn't really feel like I was over-matched," said Bavaro. "I wasn't confident I would win, but I knew I could compete with those guys."
 
"I think he surprised a lot of people," recalled Reider. "They had never seen a guy from Gettysburg before at nationals."
 
Because of his performance, Bavaro earned the right to compete at the NCAA University Championship at the University of Wyoming. After besting the elite athletes at the College Division level, he would now face the best grapplers from some of the biggest schools in the nation, including powerful programs at Oklahoma State University, Iowa State University, and Michigan State University.
 
The size of the school and the experience of his opponent mattered little to Bavaro. The Gettysburg wrestler took down Army's Mark Scureman with an 8-5 decision before posting back-to-back pins. He felled Lock Haven's Bill Blacksmith, who would win the University title at 145 pounds in 1966, 36 seconds into the second overtime. Bavaro then pinned returning All-American Jim Crider from Colorado State in the third round to advance to the championship match.
 
In the championship, Bavaro and two-time All-American Veryl Long of Iowa State turned in an epic battle. Bavaro took the early advantage, only to see the Cyclones wrestler storm back in the final seconds to tie the match. After two scoreless overtime periods, the decision went to the referees. The first scored the match for Long, the second for Bavaro. The deciding vote went to the third official who selected Long the winner.
 
"The thing that really got me afterwards was when Joe said Long deserved it because he was good," said Kenworthy. "Here's a guy that shuns accolades, but he had that much sense to know that he had met one of the best in the country."
 
Bavaro's match with Long had larger consequences in the team standings as well. The decision for Long was the deciding factor in Iowa State claiming its first team championship in 32 years over Oklahoma State by one point.
 
Throughout the NCAA events and the journey home, Bavaro received a tremendous amount of support from his classmates and the community, both on-campus and off. Several teammates and fraternity brothers from Sigma Alpha Epsilon made the long journey to Colorado for the College Championships, and then turned right back around two weeks later and headed out to Wyoming to support Bavaro.
 

When Reider and Bavaro returned to Gettysburg, they were paraded through town in a convertible straight to the SAE house where a huge throng of people gathered to hear a few words from the star wrestler.
 
"When he came home it was just unreal," Kenworthy remembered. "It was unbelievable what they did."
 
That ended one of the greatest individual seasons in the history of the wrestling program at Gettysburg. But Bavaro wasn't finished. He still had one final year to go on the mat and expectations would be high once again.
 
He didn't disappoint. Often moving up and down weight classes to face the other team's best wrestler, Bavaro swept through the regular season and MAC Championship before heading off to the NCAA College event. He wrestled several close matches at NCAAs before capping the tournament with another win in the title bout at 152 pounds to claim his second-straight national title.
 
At the NCAA University Championships, Bavaro took down grapplers from UCLA, Kansas State, Army, and Oklahoma State to reach the championship match. He came up short in the finale with a 3-0 decision loss to Michigan State's Dick Cook.
 
Sometime during his sophomore year, Bavaro was approached by some friends from a larger collegiate institution who questioned his decision to go to such a small school. Bavaro never wavered in choosing Gettysburg.  
 
"I can honestly say I'm glad my decision was to stay at Gettysburg," said Bavaro. "I went here because of the academics and I didn't want to be just a number at a school like Penn State. I really didn't know I was going to be that good. For me, it was a great experience and I'm proud I did that for Gettysburg."
 
In his final two seasons, Bavaro went 50-2 with those two setbacks coming in the finals of the biggest tournament in the nation. For his career, he finished 66-4 with 23 pins.
 

Bavaro was the first national champion – team or individual – in the history of varsity athletics at the school. He is also the only Bullet to earn All-America recognition at two different levels of the NCAA.
 
After graduating with a degree in health and physical education, Bavaro continued wrestling for the Newark Athletic Club and qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials 1968. A broken arm waylaid his Olympic dreams and Bavaro went into the restaurant business shortly thereafter. He managed a steak house in Manhattan until retiring a few years ago. He still makes his way back to Gettysburg each summer as part of Reunion Weekend.
 
The Hall of Athletic Honor was created in 1978, and Bavaro was an easy pick for that first class, joining such notable former student-athletes as Bream, Warner, Eddie Plank, Paul Sieber '07, and Frank Capitani '58 in the class of 29.
 
"He fits into that mold of Gettysburg's top athletes and you always mentioned him in the same breadth that you mentioned any of the others," said Kenworthy, who covered the Bullets from 1959 to 2000. "I'm elated over the fact that Joe really put us on the map in modern wrestling history and we had such a tremendous following with him. We should be tremendously elated about it."