Rebuilding Has Become Life’s Focus for Titan Coach

The last 15 years of Cal State Fullerton wrestling Coach Ardeshir Asgari’s life seem like something out of a made-for-TV movie.

In the early 1980s, he was on the front lines in the Iran-Iraq war for almost a year. Disturbed by that fighting, he defected from Iran while wrestling in an international military meet in Caracas, Venezuela.

About three years later, he was wrestling for Fullerton and had a chance to make the U.S. Olympic team a year after he graduated.

But that dream suddenly ended.

Asgari was arrested in 1987 accused of transporting heroin and offering to sell it to an undercover Los Angeles Police Department detective. Proclaiming his innocence, he spent seven months in jail before an Orange County jury found him not guilty. After he was acquitted, Asgari filed a $5-million suit for wrongful arrest against the police department and won a $1.3 million judgment.

Only recently, after the ruling was appealed and then upheld, did Asgari receive his money. “I’m just glad it’s all over now,” Asgari said.

Asgari, 33, says he made one fairly quick decision: He soon will give up his second job, working in security at night at a Long Beach hotel. Millionaires don’t have to moonlight.

“That will give me more time to do what I really want to do, and that’s build the wrestling program back to the point it was before,” Asgari said. “I sometimes feel I owe my life to wrestling.”

A year and a half after his defection, after living in Venezuela, France and Spain, Asgari received refugee status in the United States, with the help of a U.S. Army colonel who befriended him.

He resumed wrestling in open meets and became friends with another wrestler, Joe Gonzalez, who was an assistant at Cal State Bakersfield. Asgari decided to attend college there. When Gonzalez became an assistant to Dan Lewis at Fullerton, Asgari transferred.

Asgari became an All-American wrestler for the Titans, then a part-time assistant for Lewis. He was invited to the U.S. Olympic trials in 1987. Instead, he ended up in jail. He remains convinced he was set up for the drug bust by an Iranian man whom he had befriended. He believes it was politically motivated.

“It would have been embarrassing to Iran if I had competed in the Olympics,” he said. “I think they got what they wanted.”

Asgari still can’t forget that.

“I don’t think that anger will ever go away,” he said. “I’ll carry that with me the rest of my life. I worked so hard to try to make the Olympic team, and then I had it all destroyed by that. That hurt me much more than having to spend the seven months in jail.”

But Asgari says he wants to move ahead in his goal of rebuilding the wrestling program. The Titans, who are competing in the Pac-10 championships this weekend , were only 4-7 in dual meets during the regular season and winless in the Pac-10.

Asgari says the reason is simple: less money for the program because of state budget cuts and fewer private donations.

Asgari plans to spend more time trying to raise funds, and might contribute some money himself.

“I’m going to set up some investments with some of the money I’ve gotten that should produce some regular income,” he said. “I’m thinking about giving the wrestling program a percentage of that.”

Fullerton Athletic Director John Easterbook said, “I think that would be great if he wants to do that. It just has to be done with institutional control. But it can be donated specifically for use by wrestling.”

When Asgari took over as coach in 1992 when Lewis left to become head coach at Colorado School of Mines, the program was doing well, but a major donor stopped contributing.

“He gave us $80,000 a year for three years,” Asgari said. “That helped us recruit a lot of top athletes. But when he stopped donating, it hurt. He said he just didn’t want to keep doing it. He said he didn’t think the university was contributing the way it should, so he stopped.”

Asgari says the program had eight full NCAA scholarships, as well as some partial grants, before the money dried up. “Now we can only offer tuition scholarships,” said Asgari. The wrestlers are responsible for their own room and board, as well as other expenses.

“We had a bunch of guys who came in on full scholarships graduate in 1993, and we’ve had a hard time recruiting that level of wrestler since then,” Asgari said. “I went after seven big-name wrestlers that first year I was head coach, and I couldn’t get one of them because of the scholarship situation.”

As recently as 1994, Fullerton finished 23rd in the NCAA championships. Laszlo Molnar, a four-time NCAA qualifier, took second in the 167-pound division. Three other wrestlers also qualified for nationals in 1994, but last year the Titans had only one qualifier.

With money a problem, Asgari says he has concentrated on recruiting wrestlers who want to be in Southern California. “I decided to go more for the local kids who might qualify for scholarships on their own,” Asgari said. “Many of them are good athletes, but they don’t have the long wrestling backgrounds.”

Typical is Darryl Christian of Anaheim, who wrestled at Canyon High. He had the best record on the team in the regular season at 23-7, competing in the 142-pound division. “He was recruited by quite a few schools, but he wanted to stay close to home,” Asgari said.

Carl Sharamitaro, a sophomore from Ramona High who showed promise this season at 150 pounds, says he came to Fullerton because he wanted to remain in Southern California.

“The only other Division I wrestling program around here is at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo,” he said. “I felt I would be better off at Fullerton.”

Asgari says he’s happy doing what he’s doing, and his new wealth won’t change that.

“I feel I owe a lot to wrestling,” he said, “and I owe a lot to the school. I don’t think I’d be doing as well as I have if I hadn’t come here. I’m in the right place. This is where I want to be.”