Carter Jordan, the former head coach of the wrestling team, sent out a press release on Monday outlining his frustration with N.C. State Athletics’ five-sentence press release describing his removal.
Athletics distributed their press release last Tuesday, March 20, saying that Jordan “will not return as head coach of the Wolfpack wrestling program in 2012-13.” The release also pointed out his teams’ records over the past eight seasons and announced that a national search for the new head coach had begun.
In his own press release and in an interview with Technician, Jordan made it clear that he does not feel the press release distributed by N.C. State Athletics adequately describes the circumstances.
“It was a very vague release,” Jordan said. “It left out some unfair details about our career. It’s not fair to our assistant coaches and it’s not fair to our kids.
“It seemed a little disheartening to have 15 years of blood, sweat, tears and joy from coaching at my alma mater reduced to two lines in a press release,” Jordan said. “There were a few accomplishments left out of the release.”
Among these accomplishments, Jordan was most proud of coaching Darrion Caldwell, the 2009 national champion and only national champion from the ACC since 1994. He’s also proud of his student-athletes’ hard work in the classroom.
“In a few weeks, the official score of 960 on the APR will be released,” Jordan said in his press release. “Our student athletes needed to score perfectly in five of the last six semesters to accomplish this goal, an accomplishment that is a direct reflection of our student-athletes’ tremendous character, persistence and pride.”
Outside of their press release, Athletics had no further comment when contacted and has not confirmed or denied the firing of Jordan. Jordan described his removal as a non-optional request to resign.
“They called me into the office, the senior associate walked in, congratulated me on the All-American [ Darrius Little], and they looked at me and said, ‘hey, we want to go in a new direction,'” Jordan said. “I asked them what the hell they meant, they repeated it a couple of times. So I said, ‘so you’re going to fire me?’ They said, ‘well, we don’t want to fire you, we want you to resign.'”
Jordan refused to resign.
“I told them to go to hell,” Jordan said. “There was no way I was going to resign. I’ve been preaching it to my kids for 25 years, ‘you don’t quit.’ That was the end of that. I said, ‘well, if that’s all you’ve got, you guys have a great day, but I’m not resigning.'”
According to Jordan, that is the last he has heard from anyone from N.C. State Athletics. When asked if he had any feeling that he was going to be asked to abandon his position, his answer was clear.
“No, not at all,” Jordan said. “After taking five guys to nationals and having an All-American, absolutely not.”
Despite the circumstances of his removal, Jordan is hopeful of the future. His brother, Timothy, resigned from his position as a sales director two weeks ago and the duo have decided to partner up with each other. Jordan does not think he will ever return to coaching wrestling.
“No, that’s it for me,” Jordan said. “In our business and our sport, it’s kind of one and done as a head coach because there are so few jobs.”
Jordan does, however, want the students of N.C. State to continue to support the wrestling team and to check it out even if they’ve never watched wrestling before.
“They should be really excited about the future of our sport at the University,” Jordan said. “I’ve always felt like, if you’re going to do something, you’ve got to do it first rate. I hope and pray that trend continues. I would ask the students to look after our guys right now; it’s a tough thing for them to be going through. It’s been such a pleasure to serve the students for the last 15 years; it’s just a dream. An absolute dream.”
