Head Coach of the 1997 NCAA National Champions
Lars Jensen
Jensen began as a student-athlete and finished as a coach at San Francisco State. He took the reins of SF State wrestling prior to the 1983-84 season and concluded his head coaching career in 2016-17.
In 1997, Coach Jensen led the first-ever (and only!) NCAA Division II national championship team at SF State. Under Jensen, the Gators had a wrestler qualify for the National Championships 122 times and produced 62 All-Americans. In 2012-13, Naveed Bagheri made his fourth appearance at the tournament and went on to grab the national championship title at 141, becoming Jensen's tenth individual national champion. Jensen has had 55 conference champions and 67 NWCA All-Academic team members.
Coach Jensen began his wrestling career at the College of San Mateo, where he was named the team's outstanding wrestler for two seasons before transferring to San Francisco State in 1977. A two-time letter-winner for the Gators, Coach Jensen qualified for the 1980 NCAA Division II Championships after capturing the West Regional title at 190 pounds.
Jensen has been inducted into six different halls of fame including the California Wrestling Hall of Fame and the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.
In 2022 the SF Wrestling Community came together at a dual meet and a memorial dinner to honor Coach Jensen and set up the named scholarship Endowment to honor Coach Jensen and support SFSU Wrestling in perpetuity. We continue to grow this fund as well as honor Coach Jensen annually at one of our matches and of course in the naming of this golf tournament.
Make A Gift
You can give directly to the Lars Jensen Wrestling Scholarhsip Endowment with this unique link
https://give.sfsu.edu/LJMWESchol
If you'd like to make a larger gift or speak more in depth about the fund, please contact Coach Welch and David Fierberg (Head of Fundraising for SFSU Wrestling) at dfierberg@sfsu.edu
Why Growing this Endowment Matters
The most financially stable programs in the country have endowments that support their coaching positions and/or athletic scholarship. For us, this is about building prowess today, AND a legacy.
An endowed fund is invested, and then our program draws 4% annualy to support current use scholarship. In this way, the fund exists in perpetity to honor the namesake of the scholarship and to support our program.
Endowed funds are contactually bound to support our wrestling student athletes for generations to come. There is a legal contract with the main donor that exists within the unvieristy.
At SF State we are committed to the long-term stewardship of this, and ensuring our ability ty to suceed today as well as stbalizing our program for the future.