Philly is a natural as the host of the NCAA wrestling championships. Here’s why.
The region is a hotbed for the sport. Philadelphia broke an NCAA attendance record when it last hosted the wrestling championships, also at the Wells Fargo Center, in 2011.
On the Penn campus, a select group of men with mangled ears knows a little secret about the cathedral of college basketball.
Palestra, it turns out, translates to “house of wrestling.”
Penn’s wrestling team competes there, and just up the street, Drexel also has a program. The universities are cohosting the NCAA Division I wrestling championships this week at the Wells Fargo Center in South Philly, an event that will draw more than 100,000 fans for multiple sessions starting Thursday and culminating Saturday night when 20 wrestlers square off for 10 individual titles.
While Philly’s a college basketball town for sure, local wrestlers say it’s the perfect place to host the NCAAs, an epicenter for the best wrestling has to offer.
“Most people know Pennsylvania is a wrestling state and New Jersey is also one of the best wrestling states in the country, too. There’s strong wrestling in Delaware and Maryland, too,” said Matt Valenti, a two-time NCAA champion at Penn who will be taking over as the Quakers’ head coach next season. “This makes sense.”
The Wells Fargo Center last hosted the NCAAs in 2011, when Penn State won its first national championship under coach Cael Sanderson. That event drew 104,260 fans, breaking the attendance record at the time. This year’s event, much to the chagrin of fans in wrestling Facebook groups, has had ticket prices climb higher than ever.
Pennsylvania’s high school wrestling pedigree is unrivaled, and it has more Division I programs than any other state, including top-ranked Penn State, which has become a dynasty over the last decade. Of the 330 wrestlers who qualified for this weekend’s tournament, 41 are from Pennsylvania and 26 are from New Jersey.
“The best high school wrestlers in America come out of Pennsylvania, including the Greater Philadelphia area,” said Drexel coach Matt Azevedo. “There was a time when wrestling lived in the Midwest, but East Coast is where it’s at now.”
Valenti, who wrestled at Kittatinny High School in North Jersey, said the ability to draw fans from both states, along with New York, makes the Wells Fargo Center a “slam dunk.” The addition of Xfinity Live! and the Live! Casino and Hotel will make this weekend even better than 2011, and there is a “fan experience” event at Lincoln Financial Field.
“And fans should get out into the city, too,” he said. “There’s so much great food.”
The NCAA wrestling championships often are held in the Midwest, and St. Louis is a popular location. Pennsylvania has hosted the tournament several times, in Pittsburgh and State College. Lehigh University in Bethlehem hosted the tournament several times in the mid-20th century.
Azevedo grew up in California, and while his home state has a strong wrestling pedigree, the NCAAs have rarely crossed the Mississippi River. California has never hosted a championship.
In the Philadelphia, the nonprofit Beat the Streets has helped start more than two dozen youth, middle school, and high school programs to advance the sport in urban areas. Beat the Streets, which has footprints in nearly a dozen cities, also has been involved in the nationwide explosion of girls’ wrestling, the fastest-growing high school sport in the country.
In the college ranks, Penn has cracked the top 25 rankings over the years and has had national champions in Valenti and South Jersey’s Brett Matter. It’s also home to the Pennsylvania Regional Training Center, where Olympic-level athletes and legends like Jordan Burroughs, a South Jersey native who won Olympic gold in 2012, have trained.
“Some of the best wrestlers in the country have practiced here,” said Kevin McGuigan, the director of operations at the PRTC.
The Philadelphia region also is tied to one of wrestling’s greatest tragedies, the murder of Olympic gold medalist Dave Schultz at Foxcatcher Farm in Delaware County. John du Pont, an heir to the du Pont fortune, became obsessed with the sport and turned his property into a training center that drew some of the world’s greatest wrestlers to the region. Over the years, du Pont exhibited signs of mental illness, culminating in the shooting death of Schultz in 1996. The 2014 movie Foxcatcher was based on the murder.
Schultz’s funeral was held at the Palestra.