BOARDMAN – University of Oregon Athletic Director Pat Kilkenny told a lunchtime crowd at the Port of Morrow Wednesday that it’s time to start playing hardball at the university.

The Heppner native spoke to a roomful of Boardman Chamber of Commerce members about his decision to bring back varsity baseball and ax UO’s financially-floundering wrestling program. Baseball was cut 26 years ago at the university because of similar budget concerns.

Kilkenny, who took the AD job in February, said the choice was a wrenching, business decision. Nationwide, he said, the number of wrestling programs is dwindling, while baseball programs are on the rise.

“Wrestling has become unfashionable,” he said.

Baseball, on the other hand, is a rising star and could become a revenue source for UO, he said.

Breaking the news to wrestling coach Chuck Kearney wasn’t much fun, however. Kearney’s dad, a standout, three-sport athlete at Pendleton High School, was inducted into the PHS Hall of Fame on the same day his son learned about his program’s demise.

“He lost his job the day his dad won the top honor of his life,” Kilkenny said.

It’s all about the economics. The university is one of 17 self-supporting universities in America, he said, a major, though fragile, accomplishment. UO, he said, pays its bills by excelling in football.

“People have said, ‘It never rains in Autzen Stadium,’ but guess what – it will someday,” Kilkenny said. “We have an incredible sense of urgency.”

No one at the luncheon was more giddy about the baseball program’s rise from the ashes than Dean Kegler, a Boardman resident who pitched UO’s final game in 1981. Kegler, president of Boardman Family Foods, remembers that final game vividly. The UO squad defeated Oregon State University 11-8.

“It was an emotional game for our team,” Kegler said. “There was no way we were going out as losers.”

Kegler, who later pitched professionally for the San Diego Padres and the Milwaukee Brewers, said he was ecstatic when he heard the news.

“I was elated – I called my head coach and I called my teammates,” Kegler said.

UO, which fielded its first baseball program in 1876, was the only Pac-10 school without a varsity baseball team.

Kilkenny faced a tiny group of protesters in the hallway outside the meeting room prior to the luncheon. A couple of young wrestlers wore their singlets to the gathering in order to express their objection to Kilkenny’s decision to cut wrestling.

Hans Rockwell, 10, and his brother Aristotle, 8, said the move upset them.

“I wanted to go to that school,” said Hans, who said he aspires to be an Olympic wrestler someday. “I would never go there now – I’d go somewhere with a wrestling program.”

Aristotle, whose father Richard coaches wrestling at Morrow County schools, said he has an uncle who attends UO and thought he’d go there someday, too. Not anymore, he said.

“I was very angry,” said Aristotle, a student at Sam Boardman Elementary School. “I said, ‘We have to get wrestling back – don’t let him cut wrestling.’ “

At the end of a question-and-answer session, Kilkenny bid farewell to the crowd with an enthusiastic, “Go Ducks.”