Long Beach State University Athletics
First Wrestling Coach, Boring, Passes Away
1/12/2008 12:00:00 AM | General
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First Wrestling Coach, Boring, Passes Away ROSSMOOR, Calif.— Long Beach State’s first wrestling coach, Dr. Warren “Barney” Boring, a member of the 49er Athletic and the National Wrestling Coaches Hall of Fames, and a three-time honoree of the Purple Heart during World War II, passed away on Friday at his home in Roosmoor, Calif. He was 87. He is survived by his wife of over five decades, Anne, his five children, and numerous grandchildren. Boring coached the 49er wrestling team from 1957 to 1965 and stayed on as part of the school’s faculty until his retirement in 1988. Prior, he was the coach for the three-time State Champion St. Francis (KS) wrestling team from 1947 to 1953 and was on the staff at Indiana University from 1953 to 1956. He earned his doctorate from Indiana in 1956 and then moved West, with his wife Anne, to California. In 1961, the Boring-coached 49ers finished the season with victories over Stanford, UCLA, San Francisco State, UC Santa Barbara and Arizona. He also coached the first 49er wrestler to qualify for the NCAA tournament, Dale Deffner. Boring originally enrolled at the University of Kansas in hopes of continuing his wrestling career, which he began at 16 years old member of the Kansas National Guard. The University disbanded the program and he enrolled at Kansas State in 1939. After the disruption of World War II, during which he earned three Purple Hearts, Boring re-enrolled at K-State and was elected captain of the wrestling team for the 1946-47 season. He was inducted into the 49ers Hall of Fame in 1994 and the National Wrestling Coaches Hall of Fame in 1998. Boring’s experience and promotion of the sport was not only limited to Kansas, Indiana or California, but he taught and coached at clinics world wide, including Australia. He also remained active as a competitor, competing at the age of 78 at the 1998 USA Veterans National Championships in Waterloo, Iowa. In 1975 Boring published "Science and Skills of Wrestling a 330 page technical textbook of wrestling. In addition, Boring was an inaugural member of the Southern California Wrestling Association, an organization to which he served as president for ten years. |
