This is, ostensibly, a sports story. It's about the sudden, quiet, anonymous success of UNH's wrestling program, a program that is quiet and anonymous because, at this NCAA Division I university, wrestling lurks in the off-campus, off-schedule, out-of-the-spotlight netherworld of club sports. (It's hard to be high-profile when you practice at 6:30 a.m. on borrowed mats in a tiny, aging gym attached to the local Catholic church.) More importantly, this is a story about men and women and opportunity, about different forms of dedication and about the role sports can play at any university, varsity or not.

On a cold morning in March, though, less than two weeks before the club-level national championships in Lafayette, Pa., it's hard to see the center of the story. Just five wrestlers have dragged themselves out into the gray dawn for today's practice, a distressingly low turnout. David Butler, the club's volunteer coach, turns down the rap music pulsing from a boombox and asks his wrestlers to sit together on the mat. They make a motley group around him: pasty skin, close-cropped hair, sinewy bodies, intense eyes, wild eyes, the look of hungry soldiers. Buzzing fluorescent lights cast a sour orange glow over the low-ceilinged gym. Basketballs lie strewn around piles of street clothes along one end of the room. There's no sense that this club, in just its second season of real competition, has qualified four wrestlers and three alternates for the most competitive club tournament in the nation.

Sophomore Chris Chartier had dominated the 125-lb. class at the regional championships, earning first place and a top-ranked seed at the upcoming national tournament. But his attempt to thank and inspire his teammates through an e-mail two nights ago had, instead, rankled them. He said he couldn't have done what he did without them, that when he held the trophy, he held it for all of them. They saw grandstanding in it, as if Chartier thought he was bigger than the team. Angry responses flew; rifts cut through the team. The carefully fostered sense of unity and mutual support-crucial in a sport that demands self-discipline and motivation, where there is little or no external reward-was disintegrating at just the point when the wrestlers' training should be fine-tuned, just when the final push was needed.

Theirs is a punishing sport. Chartier and the other standout wrestlers typically wrestled and ran and lifted weights three or four hours a day, six days a week. Chartier, in particular, was an animal. Some days he trained alone at the ice arena, sprinting up the steps, then sprinting a lap around the oval at the top of the seats, then repeating the process until 40 or 45 minutes later he'd done each set of steps in the arena and finished what he called his "Super Bowl." The men's hockey players loved seeing his dedication. Once in a while they'd look up from their practice on the ice and yell, "Go for it, Rocky!"

Even a small break in the wrestlers' training could cause them to lose an edge, and there's not much margin in a sport decided on points and the tiniest of mistakes. Other coaches might have ignored the incident, asked their kids to suck it up and focus on the championships. But Butler stood above his troops with his arms folded and spoke softly. "Chris isn't here this morning," he told them. "That gives us a chance to talk about what we want to do with this as a team."

David Butler, a tall, erect, muscular 47-year-old, has an aura of command about him, in the way that a U.S. senator or military general might. He joined the UNH human resources office three years ago, becoming the university's first black administrator at the vice-president level. He had taught judo and wrestling at Team Sacramento, a California-based program dedicated to training amateur athletes. He had also, along the way, worked with disadvantaged youths from the inner city, and come to believe that genuine interest and involvement can change a kid's life. He'd become a devout Christian. He'd become an expert in organizational dynamics and behavior. He knew how to walk with people of all kinds. When he casually attended a meeting for a prospective UNH wrestling club in 1999, many of those in attendance thought he was a grad student, interested only in wrestling, himself.

That meeting marked the first time in nearly a decade that wrestlers had gathered at UNH. Through the 1980s, wrestling had been a strong varsity sport here. Competing in the New England Conference against Boston University, Boston College, UMaine, UMass and other Division I programs, the late coach Jim Urquart's wrestlers developed a reputation for being athletic, well conditioned, and well coached. But the 1980s also saw the acceleration of universities scrambling to comply with the requirements of Title IX, the landmark federal legislation requiring equal access to education-and athletics-for women.

One of the key requirements of the law came to be called, simply, "proportionality." It states that a school's percentage of female athletes should match the overall percentage of females in the student body. Many schools, in an attempt to meet that requirement, added women's varsity programs to their athletic departments. But while the number of both men's and women's sports increased overall between 1981 and 1999, more than 400 collegiate men's teams were dropped. The requirement was especially complicated at schools where football programs carried disproportionate numbers of athletes, scholarships, expenses and revenues. At many schools, compliance comes down to football versus several other men's programs. Men's wrestling-a low-revenue, low-prestige college sport-was hit hard over that period, losing a staggering 171 programs.

In the New England Conference, UConn and the University of Rhode Island were the first to drop wrestling in the early 1980s, even though URI was perennially among the nation's top-ranked programs. At UNH wrestling held on for nearly 10 more years. Men's lacrosse, baseball, and the men's and women's golf programs were cut later. Women's crew was granted varsity status. The shuffling brought the percentages closer, but not all the way there: in a survey of the 301 Division I universities, published in the March 18 issue of U.S. News & World Report, only 12 schools reported a greater than even percentage of female athletes compared with their student populations. UNH, at 56.6 percent- though making U.S. News's Top 20 overall ranking for college athletic programs-was not among them.

"Everyone loves Title IX," says Gary Abbott, a director at USA Wrestling. "It's a great law. It's given women a lot of opportunities. The question is how to enforce it in a fair way?"

In 1997, faced with the alarming number of varsity programs being cut across the country, an organization called the National Collegiate Wrestling Association formed to create an official arena of competition for non-sanctioned clubs. Competing in the NCWA was the goal of the UNH wrestlers who gathered that evening in 1999.

To become a recognized club sport at UNH (there are now 23, up 10 since recreational sports moved from the Field House to the Whitt Center in 1995), students must initiate the interest and persuade a non-peer advisor to oversee the club's management. During a club's first year, the university provides administrative support only-scheduling facility time, providing some equipment, perhaps arranging a small amount of travel. In the second year, the university provides partial funding out of the annual $145 "student recreation fee." The rest of the budget must come through donations and out of the athletes' pockets.

The wrestlers passed the first hurdle when David Butler agreed to be their advisor. "I told my wife I'd coach until they got a real coach," says Butler. "That was three years ago." Butler began logging 25 to 30 hours a week outside of his day job. He brought in volunteer coaches from the community, kicked in his own money so the team could travel in something more than the cramped van the recreation department provided, scheduled scrimmages with D-III schools, helped set up an annual summer wrestling camp to raise money for the program. He also reached out to the students. He welcomed them into his office at any hour of the day, advised them about life as well as wrestling. One of his wrestlers was put on academic probation. Butler arranged a job for him in the human resources office, gave him a copy of the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and insisted on weekly meetings to monitor his progress. He allowed a woman, sophomore Rebecca Adams, to prove her seriousness and become part of the team, even though he knew she would be barred from competition.

Says Chris Chartier, who wrestled at Western New England and with a Division III all-star team in Europe before transferring here, "Coach cares about us as people, and he trains each of us as an elite athlete."

Ryan Holder '05, a New Hampshire state high school champion from Timberlane's powerhouse program, sensed something special happening here. He had been offered money to wrestle elsewhere, had checked out Plymouth State and Springfield colleges, where dedicated wrestling rooms have mats down permanently so wrestlers can work out at any time of day. "My brother wrestles D-I at B.U.," says Holder. "They have their laundry done for them, locker rooms, Gatorade, food on all their trips, eight sets of sweats. We get two pairs of shorts. But I didn't get the same vibe there that I got here. Coach Butler hits you on a different level."

Beau Dionne, a lightweight and the only senior on the club team, had wrestled for paid Division III coaches at Plymouth State. "You know," he says, "you might learn to shoot a double-leg takedown up there, but there are more important things."

In essentially two years of competing in the NCWA (that first year, just six athletes consistently wrestled), UNH has emerged as one of the stronger clubs in the country. It finished the regular season ranked fifth nationally in points, and eleventh in the coaches' poll. The club claimed the coveted "outstanding wrestler" award in three tournaments this year: Chris Chartier at the Apprentice Tournament in Virginia and the Regional Championships in Pennsylvania, and Beau Dionne at the Bryant Invitational. And all this, Butler points out, with a young group with a mix of experience coming in. "They've worked extremely hard," he says.

Seven wrestlers represent New Hampshire at the national championships in Lafayette. Chartier, Holder, Dionne and Mike Woodworth '04 had all qualified by finishing in the top six in their weight classes at regionals. Three other wrestlers had finished seventh, earning alternate status. Butler says he "happened to be" on the Internet site of the NCWA around midnight when openings for alternates were listed, and he was able to get the three additional UNH wrestlers placed.

The rift that threatened to wreck this team two weeks earlier is almost entirely healed. Each of Chartier's teammates had sought him out and talked with him. They had vented their feelings, listened to him explain what he had tried to do, worked out their differences, found a way to move on together. "I can't tell you how proud I am of these people as individuals," says Butler. "I've worked with adults my whole life who couldn't do what they did."

After pinning his first two opponents, Chris Chartier makes a risky move late in his third match, with every point counting, and loses the gamble. He pins his next two opponents, winning both matches and taking third place overall and earning All-American honors. Ryan Holder, wrestling on an injured right knee in the demanding 157-lb. weight class, hangs tough through six matches, winning four, taking sixth overall and is also named an All-American. As a team, UNH finishes 13th out of 48.

"You'd have to say that was a good showing, given how young a program we have," says Butler. "But we were so close to being in the top eight or 10."

Butler is already looking forward to next season. He's working to find sponsors to help pay the $7,000 cost of a new set of mats. Word is getting out. Butler had 20 guys on the mat at the start of this season. Next year he hopes to have at least two wrestlers in each of the 11 weight classes. "That's ideal," he says. "It makes the room more competitive." High school wrestlers are starting to contact him. ("That's unheard of at a club program," says Ryan Holder.) His returning athletes are looking into petitioning the university to reinstate varsity status. "We've stirred the dust," says Butler.

A sports story, strictly speaking, should end there, leaning forward into the arc of the next season. But something remarkable happens at that March practice when only five wrestlers show up, something that is likely to stay with these students long after they have forgotten the wins and losses of competition. The club status is irrelevant this morning, as, indeed, are the looming national championships. David Butler asks each of the wrestlers to put themselves in Chris Chartier's place as they decide how they want to react. He asks each of them if they have ever made mistakes before, if they've ever wanted forgiveness. "A very important person once told me that success is not final. Failure is not fatal. And that the most important thing is to have the courage to get out of bed every day and keep doing the right thing." He asks them to consider carrying Chris with them, to a different, more positive place. He asks them to be honest. He leaves their decision, and their means, up to them.

In the end, they do the right thing. In the moment, though, on a bleary morning under harsh fluorescent lights, on borrowed wrestling mats in a rented church gym, college athletes of the highest level are learning about something more than wrestling. They are learning about life.

Former editor of Yankee and the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, Jim Collins lives and writes in Orange, N.H.