JAMESTOWN, NY — Tyler Taylor was disheartened.
A year ago, the Southern Tier Wrestling Officials Association tournament, for which he serves as organizer, was a sad shell of itself.
Yes, his committee had resuscitated it following a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19 — a victory on its own — but the time off, uncertainty over its future and an unfortunate scheduling conflict with the NCCC tournament reduced it to a mere eight teams, a fraction of the near-40 it once boasted.
“So last year was, by our standards, not much of a success,” acknowledged Taylor, noting not just a precipitous drop in participation, but also scholarship funds.
As a “wrestling guy” this left a particularly bitter taste.
TAYLOR, A Bolivar-Richburg graduate, is a STWOA alum, having participated in the early 2000s, when it featured the same kind of glitz and glamor as the state tournament. He follows the sport state-wide. He’s been a high school official for the last 12 years. He’s part of a wrestling family (“we’ve loved it since we could walk”), with brother Andrew having recently replaced father Todd as head coach of the powerhouse Wolverines program.
“This was always one of the premier tournaments in the state,” he noted.
Determined to restore its previous glory (or at least something resembling it), Taylor sought this year to build the event back up, to turn it back in the right direction. And in this, he succeeded.
It was switched from the third week of December to the second so that it would no longer be competing with NCCC’s Linda Knuutila Tournament, which had returned from COVID a year earlier than the STWOA and claimed many of the Buffalo-area teams that had previously participated in the Southern Tier. This created a conflict with Portville’s equally long-standing tournament, but in working with the Panthers program, the STWOA received a much-appreciated blessing to swap dates.
“They were always the Saturday before us,” Taylor said, “so we proposed to flip-flop weekends with them because we didn’t want to just overtake them. … A lot of the teams they draw in don’t go to NCCC.
“We said, here’s our idea, we want to have a good working relationship with this. They were okay with it and so we changed our date and they bumped back to the following weekend. They still have 10 teams coming to their tournament, so they’re still fairly stable, and it gave us the opportunity to gain back a lot of the ground that we wanted to bring back.”
The rest was a matter of pure resolve. “This year, I just said I’m basically going to bug coaches until I can get them to commit,” Taylor said with a laugh.
And that fastidiousness has led to this: a wonderful rebirth for the area’s premier wrestling event.
THE 2023 STWOA, scheduled for this Friday and Saturday (Dec. 8 and 9), is set to feature 27 teams, nearly triple what it drew last winter, from a large geographical area, including the CCAA region, Buffalo, Steuben County and Pennsylvania. That group is highlighted by four teams that ranked in the top 15 of last year’s combined state rankings: B-R, Honeoye Falls-Lima, Chautauqua Lake and Canisteo-Greenwood.
The tournament, which originated at St. Bonaventure University some 36 years ago (“they’d stack the Reilly Center with 35-36 high school teams and their fans,” Taylor noted), has also been held at SUNY Fredonia, the Allegany Community Center in Salamanca, Northwest Arena in Jamestown and Dunkirk.
Its “hey-day,” however, was spent inside Jamestown Community College’s Carnahan Athletics Complex. That’s where it was held for its return in 2022, and through a strong relationship with JCC’s athletics director and wrestling coach, “that’s how we ended up back up here” in 2023.
And for Taylor, there’s as much a soft spot for this venue as there is history.
“It’s kind of nostalgic for me because it’s where I grew up wrestling in this tournament,” he said. “Even to reach the podium at this tournament was the biggest deal in the world because there were teams from all over; to make the top eight was absolutely incredible.
“(My brother) and I have talked about it a bunch, about going back there and it being kind of cool … and just kind of the jitters you get walking into that building. It’s like walking into the state tournament (with) the caliber of wrestling we had then and we should have again.”
THE EVENT will spotlight a number of quality programs, including five from the Big 30 (B-R, Cameron County, Portville, Franklinville and Oswayo Valley), and an incredible 41 state-ranked wrestlers from last year. Perhaps the biggest positive, however, is that, after some doubt, it’s been re-established as a preeminent tournament.
Its message to all area schools: We’re stable. We’re here to stay.
“I’ve had a lot of coaches that are reaching out and thanking me,” Taylor said. “A lot of the coaches that were on the fence because of what we didn’t have for a little while, they were nervous about coming to it because it wasn’t what it used to be; I had coaches reach out to me and say, hey, if this thing goes off as it appears it’s going to, we definitely want to get in next year.”
The ultimate hope is that it can return to the 32-to-36-team spectacle it was in the past.
“Once everybody sees what we’ve put together this year,” Taylor said, “I think it’s just gonna exponentially grow again next year. Hopefully. That’s the plan.”
