LYCOMING SET TO HOST 14^TH ANNUAL BUDD WHITEHILL DIVISION III WRESTLING DUALS

WILLIAMSPORT, PA – The 14^th annual Budd Whitehill Division III Dual Wrestling Championships will take place Friday, Jan.11, and Saturday, Jan. 12, at Lycoming College. The dual-match tournament will feature 20 of the top Division III wrestling programs from across the nation. Action will begin at 9 a.m. on both days in Lycoming’s Lamade Gymnasium.

“We’re very excited to again be hosting this event,” said Lycoming Head Coach Roger Crebs. “This is one of the premier dual-match tournaments in the nation. The competition will be fierce and the atmosphere intense as individuals and teams battle it out for the championship.”

Of the 20 teams competing, 11 are currently ranked among the top 25 teams in the nation. The College of New Jersey and Loras College headline the field, ranked 4^th and 5^th in the country respectively. TCNJ won the Whitehill Duals six times in the 1990s and is coming off a 5^th place finish at the NCAA Division III National Championships a year ago. Loras placed third at last year’s dual championships and 9^th at the National Championships.

Ohio Northern University, John Carroll University, and King’s College enter the tournament ranked 8^th, 9^th, and 10^th in the latest coaches’ poll. Host Lycoming comes in ranked 12^th in the country, while Cortland State is dubbed 17^th. Oswego State (20^th), Ithaca College (21^st), University of Chicago (22^nd), and Johnson & Wales University (25^th) round out the ranked teams in the tournament. Other teams include Case Western Reserve University and Augustana College who both finished in the top 20 at last season’s national championships, Elizabethtown College, Muskingum College, Baldwin-Wallace College, University of Scranton, Rochester Institute of Technology, Norwich University, and Heidelberg College.

The tournament also will feature some of the top individual wrestlers in the country as 20 of the competitors are currently ranked in the top eight of their respective weight classes.

Lycoming will be the sixth seed in the tournament facing Johnson & Wales in the opening round. The Warriors are 8-1 in dual matches this season. Their lone loss was to 5^th seed and 10^th ranked King’s. Last weekend Lycoming defeated tournament participants Cortland State and Oswego State.

“We’re really looking forward to the challenge of this weekend. We’re in a different position than in past year’s, being seeded sixth, so we’ll have our work cut out for us,” said Crebs. “We’re a young team, but we’ve been improving. Hopefully we can get everybody healthy to field our top line-up and see what we can do.”

Below are the initial pairings and times for the opening round of competition:

9:00 a.m. 
#1 TCNJ vs. Elizabethtown
#2 Loras vs. Case Western Reserve
#3 Ohio Northern vs. R.I.T
#4 John Carroll vs. Scranton

10:30 a.m.
#5 King’s vs. Augustana
#6 Lycoming vs. Johnson & Wales
#7 Cortland State vs. Univ. of Chicago
#8 Oswego State vs. Baldwin-Wallace