Column: Flasche once played underdog role in NCAA wrestling finals

Everyone loves an underdog.

Earlier this week, Butler nearly pulled off a shocker in the men’s college basketball finals. Powerhouse Duke escaped with a two-point victory to keep the small Indiana school from achieving a “Hoosiers”-type ending.

Back in his day, the late Jack Flasche once played the role of underdog. He headed into the 1962 NCAA wrestling tournament in Stillwater, Okla., as an unseeded qualifier at 157 pounds.

Competing for what was then Colorado State College (now Northern Colorado), Flasche opened the tournament with a 4-2 decision over Doug Koch of Lehigh. He followed up with a 2-0 upset of No. 2-seeded Ron Pifer of Penn State to reach the semifinals.

Flasche, sophomore, was paired up in the semis against Earl Perillo, the sixth-seeded entrant from Oklahoma. Flasche pulled out a 7-2 decision and found himself in the championship match against No. 1-seeded Phil Kinyon of Oklahoma State.

To put the big finale in perspective, you have to understand the type of ability that Kinyon possessed on the mat. Kinyon was a defending national champion and, of course, was a big favorite to repeat. As one wrestling historian put it, Kinyon was the type of wrestler that forced others to cut weight down to 147 or move up to 167 just so they wouldn’t have to face him.

And to top it all off, he was wrestling in front of the home fans. Oklahoma State is a school with an exceptional history in collegiate wrestling and Kinyon was one of its stars. The Cowboys won the team title in 1962.

Jay Hammond, who authored “The History of Collegiate Wrestling,” wrote about the Flasche-Kinyon match and called it one of the biggest upsets in the history of the tournament.

“Flasche stunned the OSU fans by riding the powerful Cowboy for the entire third period on the way to a 5-2 victory,” he wrote.

The win turned out to be the pinnacle of Flasche’s career. He did not compete the following season because of eligibility issues and when he returned to the national finals in 1964 as a No. 1 seed, he suffered an upset loss in the quarterfinals.

A native of Fruita, Colo., Flasche settled in Troy and was a familiar face around the golf course in Libby. Early last week, he and his wife, Lois, were killed in that horrible car accident west of Libby.

Flasche was enshrined in the University of Northern Colorado Hall of Fame in 1996. He was only one of two wrestlers to win a Division I title and he helped the Bears to three Rocky Mountain Conference titles.

(Brad Fuqua is managing editor of The Western News. He can be reached at thewesternnews@gmail.com ).