The Schultz Club Unites Top Wrestlers

PITTSBURGH — The hurt remains, and so does the anger. The questions are endless and unanswerable.

She is strong and admired, but there are nights she cries, not just for her late husband, but the two children who will never see their father again.

These are trying times of transition for Nancy Schultz, whose husband Dave, the former Olympic and world wrestling champion, was shot to death Jan. 26. John E. du Pont, the millionaire benefactor who funded the wrestling club that Schultz ran, is accused of the crime.

The slaying, senseless and inexplicable, sent shock waves through the tightknit world of amateur wrestling and brought Nancy Schultz’s life to a thudding halt.

One day, she was concentrating on her husband’s pursuit of another Olympic medal. The next, everything that was important in her life seemed not to matter.

But Dave Schultz, probably the most respected man in U.S. wrestling, mattered to many. And while Team Foxcatcher, the club that died the day he did, is no longer, the Dave Schultz Wrestling Club, born of tragedy, has taken its place. Nancy Schultz is the club’s organizer, only employee and its foundation.

“Dave’s shooting threw us for a loop. It was a major tragedy and the timing couldn’t have been worse, with the Olympics six months away,” Olympic contender Brian Dolph said. “All of Dave’s closest friends stayed loyal to him and didn’t want anything to do with Foxcatcher, so we developed a club on our own.”

Confused and pained by her husband’s death, Nancy Schultz wasn’t certain how to react initially when 20 wrestlers who had trained with her husband asked her to run the new club.

“I was getting it from both sides--wrestlers who wanted to wrestle and people who wanted to help,” she said. “My job was to fill the gap, to put the two together. Everybody wanted Dave’s name on it, so they could focus on the job at hand and honor their friend.”

The Schultz club has no plush training facility, no subsidized grant. Funds supplied by du Pont, whose eccentric behavior and unnatural fascination with guns had scared off some promising wrestlers, have been partially replaced by grants from the U.S. Olympic Committee, USA Wrestling and private contributors.

Still, the money supply is tight, and the wrestlers are having to make do with less. Tournament contestants who once stayed at the Westin during their Team Foxcatcher days now camp out at the Best Western, and the training table may be at a Ponderosa Steak House.

And rather than training together, the former Foxcatcher wrestlers have scattered to Iowa and Arizona and Pennsylvania and other locales, coming together only for major competitions such as last month’s U.S. Open in Las Vegas and next month’s Olympic trials in California.

But come together they did. Barely a few months old, the Dave Schultz Club placed second to the traditionally strong Sunkist Kids in the U.S. Open team standings.

“The only thing about wrestling, and Dave always told this, is you have to be selfish,” said Kurt Angle, the 220-pound world champion. “You can think only about yourself because you have no teammates on the mat. Yet people have done a great job with this.

“It was so great at nationals to see Nancy and her kids there, working and being with the people who love them. We’ll never get Dave back, but this is helping to keep the kids positive and is keeping Nancy involved in wrestling.”

At Olympic regional qualifiers and other tournaments, Nancy Schultz arranges the wrestlers’ travel and training expenses, finds them training partners, pays for their meals. Her children, Alexander, 10, and Danielle, 7, scurry around carrying water bottles or athletic tape, happy to be involved in the sport they came to love through their father.

“Pro sports have such complicated side effects on athletes, but wrestling still has a bit of purity to it--the values it perpetuates, the discipline, the love of family,” Nancy Schultz said. “My children were brought up in an environment of internal camaraderie. Through wrestling, they are exposed every day to university professors, curators of museums, antique collectors, stock exchange brokers, physicians. I’m glad they still have that.”

But with benefactors scarce in a sport barely noticed by the general populace except during Olympic years, Nancy Schultz doesn’t know if the club can exist beyond this year.

There are no long-term financial commitments, no promises of a training site or full-time coach.

“Down the road, it could be rough,” said Angle, who at 27, may be reaching his prime competition years. “But I have told myself I am going to worry only about this year.”

Nancy Schultz also is worried but has resolved to stay strong and positive, not only for wrestling but for the upcoming criminal proceedings and lawsuits resulting from her husband’s death. As Dolph said, “She has so much strength, it just amazes me.”

“I’m honored to say that a lot of athletes have said, ‘Please continue this,’ ” she said. “But I can’t say definitely. It’s in the planning stage and I would like to continue it, but my life is in bit of an upheaval. It’s a difficult time. I can’t promise a club forever, but only that we will try.