GREENSBORO– The Greensboro Coliseum will be the site this weekend for one of the largest single high school sporting events in the Southeast. 

The North Carolina High School Athletic Association’s annual state wrestling championships are scheduled for three days, starting Thursday night and running all day Friday and Saturday, bringing together over 600 of the state’s best prep grapplers for three days of competition. 

Almost 1,300 individual matches will be contested over the course of the event en route to crowning 56 different individual champions. That means there is one winner in each of the NCHSAA’s 14 weight divisions and four different classifications.

For the second year, the 1-A classification will have its own individual weight class champions as the sport has continued to grow. This will also be the second consecutive year the wrestling championships have been in Greensboro. Prior to that the event had a seven-year run at the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Winston-Salem.

Wrestling will start at 6 p.m. on Thursday with the 2-A classification only, and then the other classifications will begin wrestling at 9 a.m. on Friday. The tournament will run through Saturday evening with the consolation and championship finals, starting at 6 p.m. This is the 24th year that the wrestling championships have been “classified”; prior to 1987, all wrestlers, regardless of the size of the school, competed for a single title. 

The NCHSAA, with a strong tradition in wrestling, has been offering a championship in the sport since the 1930’s. 

Winston-Salem Parkland has won four consecutive state crowns and is the defending state 4-A tournament champion after winning three straight 3-A titles. Cary had won the team tournament championship at the 4-A level five consecutive times before Parkland’s win last year.

Concord Jay Robinson captured the 3-A tournament title in 2010 while Newport Croatan took the 2-A crown and West Wilkes was the 1-A winner.

 

Earlier this month three of those defending tournament champions won their respective classifications in the NCHSAA dual team championships.  Those dual team champs include Parkland (4-A), Orange (3-A), Croatan (2-A) and West Wilkes (1-A).

Wendy’s is the presenting sponsor for the NCHSAA sports program. The host city sponsors for the wrestling championships include the Greensboro Sports Commission, the Greensboro Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Greensboro Sports Council.