The McCarthy Center will be filled with screaming fans on Saturday March 22, but no basketballs will be in sight.
Instead cheering will be for 1,500 youth wrestlers ranging in age from 5 to 14, competing in the annual Jason Crawford Memorial Wrestling Tournament. Doors open at 9:30 a.m. and admission is $1.
The tournament, hosted by the Mat Maulers Wrestling Club out of Medical Lake, will consist of 18 matches running simultaneously throughout the entirety of the tournament. All wrestlers are from the Washington Little Guys Wrestling League (W.L.G.W.L), which is made up of 67 teams (3,400 registered participants) from the east side of Washington. The tournament is expected to once again bring in over $400,000 in economic impact.
This year will mark the 20th anniversary of the Jason Crawford Memorial Wrestling Tournament and the second year that it will be held at the McCarthy Athletic Center. Due to the continued growth in the number of participants, the tournament was forced to leave Eastern Washington University after 2006, its home for 17 years, and relocate so as to better facilitate the large number of competitors.
“This is youth wrestling at its finest and the public is welcome to come,” Wayne Terry, director of the Mat Maulers Wrestling Club, said. “It's great to see so many kids competing at such a high level.”
The Jason Crawford Memorial Wrestling Tournament is named after four-year former Mat Mauler member Jason Crawford, who was tragically killed in 1988 at the age of 12 while on a family vacation. Since that day the tournament has been held in his name.
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