The 2020-21 ASAA activities calendar once featured a high school wrestling season which began in late September and concluded in mid-December with a Division I, Division II and a Girls Division state championship event.
Now, the high school wrestling season has finally found a home in the Spring of 2021 with a recently established March 15th season start date and a May proposed state tournament event.
ASAA Executive Director Billy Strickland reiterated on Tuesday that the ASAA Board has established wrestling into the spring sports season for 2021, far from its traditional home in the late fall. High school wrestlers have waited for a couple of months, while winter sports such as Basketball, Hockey and Nordic Ski were realigned and assigned modified start and finish dates.
Wrestling, repositioned into the spring season, will accommodate athletes that also compete in winter sports such as basketball especially in Alaska’s smaller schools which share athletes and sport small student populations. ASAA also agreed that the wrestling state event will be seeded by committee using the existing seeding criteria.
Soldotna High School is the only Kenai Peninsula program that competes in Division I wrestling (Northern Lights Conference); Kenai, Nikiski, Homer, Seward and the smaller peninsula programs all compete in the Kachemak Conference in Division II wrestling. Peninsula girls compete in both the Northern Lights and Kachemak Conferences.
