By Per Peterson
Tracy’s streets were as packed as the bleachers at the Veterans Memorial Center on Saturday, as Tracy was host to the 2022 K-6 Northland Youth Wrestling Association (NYWA) Team Wrestling Duals.
The event drew a total of 17 teams to Tracy – Region 2 is the largest of all of the NYWA regions in the state. And when you consider each team had at least 12 kids, plus all their family members, it’s no stretch to think that Saturday was one of the busiest days in town in a long while.
And it wouldn’t have happened without a good amount of team work.
“It takes a team effort to pull this off,” said Tracy-Milroy-Balaton head wrestling coach Karl Campbell. “There is a handful of us that spearhead different aspects.”
Jamey and Rick Johnson take care of the concession coordination, Campbell said, and this year Shannon Wolske joined the team and will be taking over for Jamey moving forward. Other people who contributed this year include Jeremy Trulock, Pam Peterson, and City employees Jeremy Hall and Lydel Sik.
“Our high school team comes in and sets it up Friday after ball practice, works the tournament as table workers, and then breaks it back down,” Campbell said. “Our varsity coaching staff supervises those processes, as well as all the onsite supervision and problem solving during the tournament. I also set up matching the bracket rounds to the number of mats we are running to make sure it gets done efficiently in a timely fashion.”
Kent Cooreman, who is in charge of communicating with NYWA in getting the brackets set up as well as collecting the rosters for all 17 teams, also contacts and lines up most of the officials. This year’s tournament, he said, went very well.
“It went smooth,” said Cooreman. “We’ve been doing this since they started team, either in 1998 or 1999, so it’s over 20 years — since Day 1. It’s a lot of preparation. We always try to look in advance a year to make sure the Veterans Memorial Center is available.”
See this week’s Headlight Herald for more on this article.