The top 12 teams from last year?s National Collegiate Wrestling Association national duals championship are all back for this year?s competition.
And in its final season as an NCWA program, one school wants to finish one spot better.
Defending champions Liberty University and 2012 runner-up Lindenwood University-St. Charles are two of the 20 teams set to begin competition today at the trade center for the NCWA national duals championship. The event is in Dalton for the third straight year.
The first round begins at 2 p.m. and will continue through six rounds of round-robin action before Saturday?s 1 p.m. quarterfinals. The finals are scheduled for 5 p.m. There also will be a five-team high school bracket, with those finals also set for 5 p.m. Saturday.
Liberty, located in Lynchburg, Va., competed last season for the first time in the NCWA, which includes among its programs some teams wishing to join the NCAA or programs dropped from NCAA ranks due to athletic departments cutting the program from its list of varsity sports. Liberty, part of the latter group, beat Missouri?s Lindenwood 25-15 in the championship dual.
While it was Liberty?s first shot at winning the event, this will be Lindenwood?s last. The program is considered ?emerging,? coach Chad Smith said, and will begin competing at the NCAA level next season. It started the season ranked No. 1 in the NCWA coaches poll, with Liberty right behind.
?Every coach wants to win,? Smith said. ?The competition here and atmosphere is pretty neat for the guys to experience. ... We?ve got some guys from last year and a lot of new guys for this year.?
The teams finishing in the top eight from the year prior receive automatic invites back to the duals championship, NCWA executive director Jim Giunta said, and the rest of the invitations are based on preseason projections and early season results. All of last year?s top eight ? University of Maryland-Baltimore County, Grand Valley State, Lindenwood-Belleville, Apprentice, Mercer and Middle Tennessee State ? accepted and are expected to be present for today?s first round. Additionally, the next four finishers from last season ? Marion Military, North Florida, Central Florida and Georgia Southern ? all are in the tournament?s field.
?It will be tough,? Liberty coach Jesse Castro said. ?We?ve lost kids from last year. We?re going to have to wrestle up.?
Six teams ? Wichita State, Southern Virginia, Carroll, Connect-icut, Bowling Green and Toledo ? from last year?s 23-team field are not returning. Three new teams ? Tennessee Temple, South Carolina and South Florida ? are in this year?s group. Georgia and East Tennessee State University are other nearby schools competing, while Cincinnati and Auburn round out the field.
Penn State-Fayette is listed on the event?s website, nationalduals.org, but NCWA sports information director Scott Farrell said the school is no longer coming.
Another returning school is Massachusetts Institute of Technol-ogy, which finished 15th last season. It was a Division III school but dropped athletic department support in 2009 and became an NCWA program. MIT coach Tom Layte summed the event up as a great event preceding the NCWA championship, the traditional tournament scheduled for March in Dallas, Texas.
?I think this is great to come down and see some teams you don?t get to see,? Layte said. ?It helps you for seeding at the national tournament, too.?
The event is being held one weekend earlier than last season, which may explain the drop in the number of college teams competing. Giunta said it was moved up in order to get more high school teams and avoid their postseason traditional tournaments.
?We moved it up a week thinking, based on talking to high school coaches in Georgia, that these coaches would come on board if it was a week earlier,? Giunta said. ?With the colleges, it?s very difficult to do it early, because they?re still on break.?
Southeast Whitfield is listed on the website as one of the seven high schools competing, but Giunta said the Raiders are not coming due to contractual obligations with a scheduled GHSA event. Southeast coach Michael Herndon said the team is scheduled to compete at Chattooga?s Northwest Georgia Duals.
Also listed on the NCWA website but not competing is Tennessee?s Siegel, Giunta said. The five high schools expected to compete are Alabama?s Thompson, the defending champs, and Auburn; Kentucky?s Fort Campbell and Wayne County; and Tennessee?s Pigeon Forge. Last season included three high schools, with Grissom and Bradley Central joining Thompson.
Tickets are $20 for adults, $10 for students and free to children younger than 10 who are accompanied by a paying adult. Tickets will be discounted by $5 for those who bring canned goods for City of Refuge.
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