Organizers consolidate NLC tourney

WASILLA — Earlier this season, the Wasilla Warriors added a new twist to the North-South Invitational, a longtime staple on the Alaska prep wrestling schedule.

Rather than spreading the 24-man bracket tourney over two days, tournament organizers opted to consolidate the meet into a single day.

The event was such as success, Wasilla High has decided to do something similar once again. But this time it’s for the Northern Lights Conference championships.

Wasilla High will host the entire NLC Championships wrestling tournament on Friday, WHS activities director Paul Cossette said.

Athletes will weigh in at 7:30 a.m., and start wrestling at 9 a.m. Championship semifinals are slated for 4 p.m., and the championship finals will begin at approximately 8:30 p.m., Cossette said.

Cossette said the one-day format has already been incorporated by other conferences within the state, and all of the programs within the NLC have been supportive of the idea.

Wasilla head coach Shawn Hayes said he began to seriously think of the idea of making the NLC tourney a one-day meet about halfway through the North-South Invite.

“In our region, we use a 16-man bracket, however a lot of the teams don’t have the two entrants,” Hayes said of the eight-team NLC. “We can turn it into one day, and it will work just fine.”

There is one catch.

Prep athletes are only allowed to wrestle five matches per day, according to the National Federation of High School Association bylaws. If a sixth match is needed, those athletes would have to return to WHS and weigh in on Saturday. But the only way that could be possible, Hayes said, is if a wrestler loses in the first round and works their way to the conference’s fifth-sixth place match.

“We let all the coaches know there’s a small chance,” Hayes said of the potential for a final match on Saturday.

That’s one reason organizers opted to host the tourney on Friday, Hayes said. A one-day tourney on Friday will also give state qualifiers one additional day of rest before the state championships, which start Dec. 11 at Chugiak High School.

“They’d get two days off,” Hayes said. “That’s not normally the case during wrestling season.”

Consolidating a two-day event into a one-day meet will also eliminate many of the extended breaks found during a typical conference tourney.

Contact Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.