Michael Burch was made for wrestling. The current assistant wrestling coach took up the sport when he was 5 years old and has since dedicated his life to it.
"Wrestling is a part of my soul," Burch said. "It's what I do."
But in 2001, the University of California-Davis, where Burch had been employed since 1995 as the wrestling team's head coach, took part of Burch's identity away from him. Despite a winning season in 2001 in which four of the team's wrestlers qualified for the national tournament, Burch was fired in May of that year. The dismissal came the same week the athletic department honored him as its coach of the year for the second time in his tenure.
A few months later, Burch returned to Brown, where he had held a coaching position for three years before moving on to UC-Davis. Burch said Head Coach Dave Amato, with whom he worked during his first stint at Brown, contacted him following his termination to alert him to an open assistant coach position.
Burch alleges he was fired from UC-Davis because university officials were angry with his public support for four female wrestlers he had recruited at the beginning of the 2000-01 season. He said it is very common in California to see women wrestling on men's teams and thought recruiting some female grapplers would reflect that trend.
However, Burch said university officials forced him to remove the women from the team for a variety of reasons, including the fact that "there wasn't enough money to cover the costs of insurance for the women. ... They couldn't afford to keep women on the team when they weren't going to crack the varsity lineup."
After removing the women from the roster before the season started, Burch said the university allowed him to reinstate the wrestlers during the year and three rejoined the team. However, at the end of the year, Burch said the squad's roster was capped, and the three remaining female wrestlers were once again removed from the team.
According to an Aug. 24 Boston Globe article, university officials decided to fire Burch at a meeting on April 24, 2001, but Burch told the Globe he was not informed of his dismissal until May 29 and UC-Davis Athletic Director Greg Warzecka would not tell him why he was being let go.
Burch told The Herald UC-Davis later told him he was being terminated due to NCAA violations. According to Burch, UC-Davis officials also said he was "difficult to work with" and that he had exceeded the program's budget in his last year.
However, Burch said he believes his firing had more to do with his support for female participation in the wrestling program.
"With all the media coverage that the issue was getting, I think they were pushed up against the wall and needed to do something," Burch said. "So they fired me. When I was fired I felt like I was run out of town. When you love your work, you feel like they stole something from you."
Warzecka and UC-Davis Senior Associate Athletic Director Pam Gill-Fisher could not be reached for comment.
Burch claims he was never informed of the alleged violations while serving as head coach and that universities usually do not take such drastic action when dealing with self-reported NCAA violations.
"They said that some of the things I did were NCAA violations which ... even if I did them, are not NCAA violations," he said. "Otherwise, the accusations are simply not true. What's more important is that they filed this case after I was hired by Brown. It was a completely malicious act."
Burch filed a lawsuit in 2003 accusing UC-Davis of Title IX discrimination, according to the Globe article.
(Title IX, which was passed in 1972, requires universities receiving federal funding to provide equal opportunities for men and women.)
Burch's lawsuit, which is pending, claims UC-Davis destroyed Burch's career and asks for repayment of lost wages, he said. Despite his prior success as a head coach, Burch said he has not received an interview for a vacant head coaching position in the five years since he was fired.
Four women who were involved in the UC-Davis wrestling program filed a companion suit alleging sexual discrimination several months after Burch's own suit was filed, according to the Globe article.
Amato said firing Burch was UC-Davis' loss.
"He does a great job," Amato said of his assistant. "What sets him apart is the way he not only helps the wrestlers with their wrestling, but also academically and socially."
Several team members agreed with Amato.
"Burch is very professional and savvy. He also has a good understanding of our academic needs," said David Saadeh '07, the team's co-captain.
"He is an excellent motivator during practice, academically and in everything else," said Shawn Kitchner '07, another co-captain.
Brown's Department of Athletics is aware of Burch's lawsuit, though Director of Athletics Michael Goldberger said he did not know what, if any, role the accusations leveled against Burch played in his hiring since he was not director at the time.
"Personally, I can tell you that I would be comfortable recommending Mike for an opening to another school," Goldberger said. "But we want to treat him fairly just like we would any of our other assistant coaches."
Brown does not have any female wrestlers in its program at the moment. Goldberger said he would be open to seeing women on the team but that the University does not have an official stance on female wrestlers and the issue has not been raised at Brown.
Burch is pursuing a doctoral degree from Brown in the history of religions and philosophies while he awaits the resolution of his lawsuit, but he continues to advocate for expanding opportunities for female wrestlers.
"I think it would be extremely difficult for women in the sport. But if they had their own division to compete in, it could be possible," Kitchner said.
While Burch noted that "contact sports are a major hurdle that women athletes have to get over," he said "the NCAA and universities feel like they have to protect women. But until we stop 'protecting' them from men's opportunities, there is not true equity."
