Aden Valencia of the Stanford Cardinal celebrates after defeating Shayne Van Ness of the Penn State Nittany Lions during the Division I Men’s Wrestling Championship held at Rocket Arena on March 21, 2026, in Cleveland.

Stanford just had its best men’s wrestling finish in school history. But according to its head coach, Chris Ayres, that success has put the program on the brink of being torn apart — and he’s now pleading with Cardinal alumni and fans to increase their financial support to the program.

Ayres recently won national coach of the year after he led the Cardinal to a sixth-place finish in the 2026 Division I wrestling championships. This included the school’s third-ever individual national title winner in redshirt freshman Aden Valencia and a program-high four All-American finishes — Valencia, redshirt sophomore Tyler Knox, redshirt junior Nico Provo and freshman Angelo Posada. 

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But in a lengthy Facebook post on Saturday, Ayres accused other schools of floating major name, image and likeness (NIL) offers in back channels to try to entice Cardinal wrestlers into the transfer portal. And it appears to have worked: According to Ayres, Knox and Provo and two-time All-American junior Hunter Garvin have all entered the transfer portal in the two weeks since the season ended. And another, senior Daniel Cardenas, is considering it as well as a graduate transfer.

“The conversations were basically the same with each of them,” Ayres wrote. “They love Stanford and don’t want to go, but would be fools if they didn’t enter the portal to find out the real numbers … their ‘market value.’ From numerous back channels, the ‘poachers’ were getting numbers to them and they were high. So I really couldn’t blame them for going in.

“$200,000+. But nothing could be verified without hitting the portal, so here we are. Three All-Americans in the portal, one holding out.”

Ayres called Stanford the “most under-resourced” wrestling program of any in the top 10 from this past season. He further alleged that the direct revenue sharing payments that Penn State — winners of five straight national titles and 13 of the past 15 — pays to its athletes is more than Stanford’s entire wrestling budget. (According to StateCollege.com, Penn State wrestlers received $1.45 million of the maximum of $20.5 million a school can give to its athletes. Based on publicly available data, that’s more than 10 times the national average for a wrestling program.)

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While Ayres didn’t say which schools are pursuing the top Stanford wrestlers, he did name several top competitors in an extremely Bay Area-coded metaphor.

“To use Silicon Valley terms, Stanford Wrestling is the startup that is willing to challenge the corporate giants (PSU, Oklahoma State, and Iowa),” Ayres wrote. “History is full of moments like this, when smaller, more agile organizations disrupt industries that once felt untouchable. Netflix taking on Blockbuster. Airbnb competing with the largest hotel chains in the world. Uber challenging an entire taxi industry that had been in place for decades.”

Before coming to Stanford, Ayres spent 17 years at Princeton, building the Tigers into a nationally competitive program. He came to Stanford in 2023 and has quickly lifted the Cardinal to record-breaking performances in just three years. But now, he says that success has put a target on the program’s back — though he wrote that neither he nor the Stanford wrestlers are asking to get close to the financial amounts those top programs spend, claiming, “We can win a national title for a fraction of the cost.” 

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Stanford wrestling was on the brink of being eliminated back in 2021, when the school planned to drop 11 sports to save money. But as wrestling supporters raised more than $12 million, sophomore Shane Griffith won a national championship that year, wearing a logoless black singlet in a protest against the school’s plans. Months later, Stanford reversed course and kept all of its programs.

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Ayres continued the startup comparison when noting the program’s rise since that moment. But he said they have “about two weeks” to get enough money to convince the wrestlers who entered the portal to stick it out at Stanford.

“We have something special. It would be a shame to let it slip away,” Ayres wrote. “The opportunity is here. The team is here. The culture is here. Now we need the backing to match it.”

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