Cleveland State Students Approved a Wrestling Tax to Save the Team a Decade Ago. The Team Was Cut Anyway

Wrestlers at a Cleveland State versus Kent State match earlier this year. The school announced on January 23 that 2025 would be the team’s last year on the mat. Credit: Megan Is Imaging

The last time Riley Shaw freaked out about Cleveland State’s wrestling team was sometime in March of 2015.

Shaw, a junior in the heavyweight class, was fretting at a campus decision that would effectively take him off the team his final year. Then Athletic Director John Parry announced Cleveland State’s wrestling team would be no more; a lacrosse team would be installed instead.

He had 100 wins under his belt. He had qualified for the NCAA tournament three times. He scored the league title twice.

“Oh, I was pretty upset,” Shaw, 31, and now a pre-trial attorney, said on Tuesday. He recalled the tit-for-tat. “Wrestling was, you know, the one that was put on the chopping block.”

Two weeks later, Shaw and a handful of teammates approached Emily Halasah and Malek Khawan, then president and vice president of Cleveland State’s Student Government Association. What if the students could save the team? he asked. And with how much money?

Halasah and Khawan proposed a vote.

“Would you be willing to pay a fee of $4 to $6 per credit hour,” a proposed referendum read, “to maintain a Division 1 wrestling program and create an additional woman’s team?”

An extra $75 or so per semester wasn’t a big deal: the SGA’s referendum was passed with a healthy majority, 975 to 650.

Roughly a decade later, following a pandemic and a national reckoning with higher education enrollment, Cleveland State is now mired in a repeat of history. On January 23, the university announced in a press release that it decided to slash three of its sports programs from its annual budget—cutting short the college careers of 10 women golfers, 30 softball players and 37 wrestlers.

A cut that Cleveland State President Laura Bloomberg framed as necessary to stave off budget woes; after all, the school is staring down a $40 million projected deficit come 2029.

Wrestling, she said, pretty much had to go.

“Over the past several years, one of our primary goals has been to restructure our financial model and to evaluate where our students are engaged academically, socially and competitively,” Bloomberg wrote in that statement. “As a result, our athletics department, like many other departments at CSU, has had to make difficult decisions regarding the programs we offer.”

That choice by Cleveland State to take its 37 Division 1 wrestlers off the mats by the end of the academic year prompted a windstorm of complaints and head-scratching from those who’ve worn the green-and-white singlet and others who have cheered from the bleachers.

Even some celebrity attention: Stipe Miocic, UFC fighter and Cleveland State alum, wrote on Twitter/X that the school’s choice to cut its team made him “sick to his stomach.”

“My heart goes out to everyone affected by this decision,” Miocic wrote. “I hope there’s still time to make a difference and save this incredible program.”

Which is Shaw’s mindset today. Immediately after Cleveland State’s announcement, he and a group of current students and former alums created Save Cleveland State Wrestling, an advocacy team focused on raising $16,000 in legal fees to presumably start litigation this year.

A potential legal strategy that Shaw, along with colleague and alum Jason Effner, believes revolves around that 2015 referendum—that the nearly $1 million or so the so-called wrestling tax raised per year has to amount to something.

Or at least amount to a closer look at the books. A 2024 report from Cleveland State’s Steering Committee showed that 10 teams—including Men’s Basketball, Volleyball and Men’s Soccer—operated at a net-financial loss in 2023, and, the report said, “require further evaluation.”

Eight teams however did not. Wrestling, the report concluded, bolstered Cleveland State’s revenue by at least $100,000 per year. All while costing the school, a separate breakdown of financial data showed, roughly $364,000 annually. (The tenth priciest athletics program.)

As for that wrestling tax?

“We don’t know where it was going,” Shaw said. “We just know it wasn’t going to wrestling, or women’s track and field.”

Elusive, as far as Effner is concerned. “It’s essentially been a game of smoke-and-mirrors by the university ever since” the spring of 2015.

Both pointed to a page on Cleveland State’s Bursar, an FAQ on Billing and Athletic Fees, which from at least July 2021 to this January had cited a “non-binding referendum” to “maintain wrestling at CSU” to explain that $3 extra per credit hour.

But after January 2, it’s a different story. Today’s page cites the referendum being used to “maintain athletic programs.” No wrestling team specifically.

Scene requested a comment from Cleveland State on how the referendum influenced or did not influence the school’s decision to cut wrestling. Scene did not hear back in time for article publication.

Effner told Scene they had met with Bloomberg to get more information on the reason behind the cuts, but the meeting was not productive, he said.

A non-binding referendum could mean that Cleveland State is legally allowed to use money from that $3 tax for any athletic program, yet that hasn’t been confirmed by any parties. “That probably means they shouldn’t be collecting it in the first place,” Shaw said.

And neither has any glimpse of the team’s return. A fear that, Shaw said, would keep 37 or so young men from blooming skills on the mat for what happens in their lives out of the gym.

“I truly believe my work ethic, pretty much everything I do, comes from the skills I developed when I was a wrestler,” Shaw said. “Any wrestler will, I think, tell you something similar.”