Oakland Univeristy’s enrollment has been increasing in recent years and the school’s administration might consider thanking the Club Wrestling program for its contributions.

“We have 18 state placers out here that are all freshman,” team president Kyle Nieporte said. “I don’t think any of these guys would have come to Oakland had it not been to wrestle.”

Even more impressive considering that because of Title IX, the wrestling team does not have any school-sponsored scholarships to promise recruits.

Title IX is an education amendment created in 1972 essentially to bar discrimination in school classrooms and athletic fields. Since the number of scholarships given out to male and female athletes must be equal, many male-only varsity sports that do not draw large revenue for the school, like wrestling, are cut and become club sports.

The wrestling club at Oakland, though, is not your average college club sport. While not even every varsity athlete is guaranteed money from the school, Oakland’s wrestling team hands out around $1,000 in scholarships to each one of its members as long as they meet the team requirements.

“We have raised around $25,000-$30,000 this year for the team, one guy donated $10,000,” Nieporte said. “All these guys get scholarships … not from Oakland University. They are from us to the guys for coming out and working hard four days a week and making weight at all the tournaments.”

Nieporte hopes that the club’s success at bringing in wrestlers is noticed by the powers that be.

“Recruiting wrestlers is good for us, but it is good for the school too if you look at all the money that we are bringing in,” Nieporte said. “I hope that the school remembers that whenever the talks come up for wrestling to become a varsity sport.”

Last year’s team, which didn’t feature anyone who was recruited to wrestle at Oakland, placed fourth at nationals. The placement was the best that Oakland has ever had in the National College Wrestling Association. It was also the club’s first year with a full roster.

Oakland hopes to repeat their success this year and Nieporte has full confidence that they will.

“I expect that we will place around the same this year, if not better,” Nieporte said. “I think we will beat a couple varsity teams, maybe not Division I, but definitely Division II or Division III teams.”

The team’s ultimate goal of getting back to nationals and placing in them recently hit a speed bump as Garrett Johnston, the team’s 185-pound wrestler, has been out with shoulder problems. Johnston, a junior from Chesaning, Mich., was the team’s first ever All-American. Nieporte, however, is not concerned.

“Garrett has a little bit of a shoulder problem, but should be back by the winter semester, which is the only semester that really matters,” Nieporte said. “To tell the truth, we have a guy, Josh Villarreal, who is just as good if not better (than Johnston).”

The team has had to replace many more spots than Johnston’s, however, since the team has only eight upperclassmen wrestlers, less than one-third of the roster. Nieporte believes that this speaks to the success of last year’s team.

“We only returned four or five guys from last year’s team because everybody else got recruited up to a higher Division school,” Nieporte said.

He also said he believes the team has benefited from the faltering economy, as many of the area’s top wrestlers are choosing to stay home and wrestle at Oakland instead of going out of state. Even if the out of state schools offer scholarships, they are usually not enough to cover the cost of moving out of state.

Nieporte explained how he recruited one freshman in particular.

“We have one kid who was a state champ,” he said. “We went to him and said, ‘Hey I know you got recruited here, here and here to go outside the state. You can save this much by staying in state and going to Oakland.’ Then you throw in another $1,000 from us and the guy saves thousands of dollars to wrestle competitively close to home. We basically just put the numbers together.”

Oakland wrestles out of the NCWA, which is, in theory, below the NCAA’s three divisions. However, because of Title IX, many school’s teams have been forced to turn their wrestling into clubs, making the NCWA the largest wrestling organization in the country.

For Oakland to make it to nationals again, they have to place in the top six of their division, which consists of 24 teams from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

The club got off to a great start this weekend. Three wrestlers — Villarreal, Jake Hyde and Peter Waszkiewicz — were able to place at Oakland’s first tournament.

The tournament, held at Eastern Michigan University, had many Division I and Division II teams competing.