In response to: Wrestling: Program’s First Freshman All-American Aims for the Top of the NCAA Podium
Current issue
November 2024
Princetonians lead think tanks; the perfect football season of 1964; Nobel in physics.
In the list for Princeton wrestlers to make it to the NCAA Division I finals, heavyweight John Sefter ’78 was not mentioned.
He was a legendary performer at Princeton who won two consecutive Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association (EIWA) titles as well as his national runner-up performance in 1978. He was a key performer on the 1977 EIWA team champions as well. This is the first and only Princeton team to take that title.
Sefter wrestled in the unlimited (heavyweight) category decades before there were weight limits. He was routinely undersized against his opponents. His loss in the 1978 NCAA finals was to Jimmy Jackson of Oklahoma State, who had over a hundred-pound weight advantage: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1978/03/18/wrestlings-big-3-gain/1d373552-797d-49c8-9629-8f955a01c5b5/?utm_term=.12038cbde694
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_NCAA_Division_I_Wrestling_Championships