Slippery Rock AD Roberta Page on wrestling, flag football: 5 things we learned in ‘Eye on Sports’ interview
Slippery Rock University made a pair of announcements in November that will reshape the look of the athletic department over the next few years.
SRU, under athletic director Roberta Page, is set to bring back men’s wrestling and launch a women’s flag football team during the 2027-28 school year.
Over the next three years, the university will raise funds for both programs and hire coaches to begin recruiting for the first teams. Men’s wrestling will join the PSAC once again, and flag’s conference home will be determined in the coming years.
Page, who said she would’ve relished the chance to play flag when she was growing up, joined Alter Eagle’s “Eye on Sports” last week to discuss the news. Here’s what we learned from the discussion:
We already knew from Butler High coach Scott Stoner, an SRU wrestling alumnus, a group of former Rock wrestlers has been petitioning the university for years to bring back the program that was folded in the mid-2000s. Page called them “probably the strongest alumni group in all honesty” and said they have been speaking to her since her first day as AD in 2021.
“We met with that wrestling group multiple times and it made sense,” Page said. “It made sense from where they were coming from, made sense from where we were coming from. And so we took a really strong, hard look at it.”
She said “what we wanted to look at” during the discussions was financial support from the alumni to last the first three years before SRU takes over fully. The initial news release cited a fundraising goal of $2 million, with a match of up to $250,000 from former wrestler Robert Dudley. It appears the commitment is there.
Page said there was a “strong look” at adding a women’s wrestling team at the same time, since it wouldn’t require any significant up-front investment in facilities or equipment that wasn’t already going to happen with relaunching the men’s team.
But the recent growth of women’s flag football (more on that in a moment) caught the university’s eye and put a women’s wrestling program on the back burner. Page did not commit to the program in the future but did not rule it out, either.
“I’ll never say never, because it’s more about opportunities,” she said. “And so, once we get these two programs up and running and we take a look at it, you know, maybe women’s wrestling makes sense, but then again to your question a few minutes ago, what would we do looking at Title IX, what other opportunities can we provide on the male side?”
She also said SRU explored adding men’s and women’s golf because they are not large rosters, but they “backed off” that without an NCAA-quality golf course nearby.
Page made it sound like the decision to launch women’s flag football was an 11th-hour decision. That’s probably not quite accurate, but she said: “All of a sudden, flag just took off like a lightning rod. And so we kind of started shifting our thinking a little bit and started looking at the opportunities that flag would present itself and reworked some of our numbers, and it just made sense for us to look at providing those opportunities.”
Both men’s wrestling and women’s flag involve rosters of about 25 athletes, she said, which was enticing for Title IX requirements. And SRU has turf fields with scoreboards available.
And while PIAA sanctioning girls wrestling has led to a surge in high school programs across Pennsylvania — there are four varsity programs in Butler County right now — flag football is also growing rapidly with backing from the NFL, Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles in Pa. The PIAA sanctioned the sport starting in the spring.
“I think the NFL getting behind it is also intriguing,” Page said. “It’s just opportunities that I think are a little bit more enticing for young females, young girls, coming up through the elementary, middle school, high school program.”
SRU plans to hire coaches in the spring to give them two years to build a staff and recruit ahead of the 2027-28 school year. She said within “two minutes” of making the announcement, she got a handful of resumes from wrestling candidates. Page wants coaches “dedicated to The Rock” and the athletic department’s culture, but also suggested there could be different types of coaches needed for both programs.
The men’s wrestling coach will have to “make a connection with the alumni base.” She suggested the flag coach could come from a tackle background and may do both, adding she’s seen coaches at other schools who do that.
“I want somebody that really wants to see young women grow through the sport,” Page said.
Page, who grew up playing basketball and softball through her own playing days at SRU and said she played youth tackle football for a couple years, said “opportunity” at least 11 times during the interview.
Opportunities for female athletes, in particular. But also to host new winter events (for wrestling) on campus on days when the basketball teams aren’t playing.
Page stressed SRU is in a position where it doesn’t need to add scholarship athletes to “keep the doors open” but is adding both programs because it can.
It could also be viewed as an opportunity to grow the image of the athletic department.
