Valkyrie Wrestling held their 1st annual Choosers of the Slain at the Highlands Sports Complex in Triadelphia. This is the first all-girls wrestling tournament held in the area. Some tournaments have exhibitions or girls’ divisions, but none have yet to wrestle the task of having an all-girls event.
Chris Ward of the Valkyrie Wrestling Club decided to take on this task and run with it. Knowing Chris for many years and having coached with him, I knew he would only hold a first-class event. A testament to this was the number of people that came up to Ward and thanked him for holding such an event. And what a tournament it was.
As Ward was organizing the event, he was hoping to get 50 or 60 girls to register, which would have been a huge victory. When it was all said and done, they ended up having 125 registrations. Ward have never seen a tournament with more than 40 girls or so. Having this number, he has a goal of over 200 or more for next year. Not only were there wrestlers from the local area like, the Monarchs, Valkyrie, Cameron, and Brooke. Some were from a little outside of the area like South Parkersburg, Preston, Bridgeport (WV), Trinity, Williamstown, and Clarksburg. Others came from as far away as Johnstown, Dayton, Tennessee, and Indiana.
I asked Ward how people from so far away heard of the event, he said a huge Facebook push was behind wrestlers coming from all over. Ward told me there are many Facebook groups that are close knit that share everything when it comes to girls wrestling.
He hopes to grow the event even more in the coming years. To help with this Valkyrie gave away some amazing awards, championship belts for the champions, and rings for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place. Something incredibly unique that’s not seen at many tournaments.
For this year’s tournament there were 7U, 9U, and 12U divisions, each being broken into weight divisions as well. Next year Ward would like to add a 15U division. Doing this he would also have to add to the 3 mats of action that they had this year.
This will not be an issue as he strategically chose the Highlands Complex as the site for the event. Not only is the venue spacious and allows the space the tournament needs to grow, but it also gives people many options for food, lodging, and shopping.
Ovathletics.com is excited to see this tournament grow and we are looking forward to being a part of it in the future. A thanks goes out to Chris Ward for the invite to the tournament. As we look forward to covering it again in the future.
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