After Evergreen High School wrestling coach Jake Wilcox took over as director of the PAC Coast Wrestling Championships in 2022, he began considering how he could improve the regional wrestling tourney.
This year, the PAC Coast Wrestling Championships, which took place Thursday, Dec. 21 and Friday, Dec. 22 at the Clark County Event Center, featured even more wrestlers: 140 teams representing 78 schools from Washington and Oregon attended.
It also featured 12 mats, up from eight at last year’s event. By increasing the number of mats and eliminating the second-chance tournament, Wilcox expanded the tourney to include a girls bracket.
In previous years, the tournament was held at Clark County high schools, but Wilcox found the Clark County Event Center was the best place to put wrestling front and center in the region.
“Wrestling isn’t often one of the sports that gets a lot of the exposure and a lot of the prestige,” Wilcox said, adding this year’s format changed that.
“It just gets a chance for wrestling in general and our local kids to be the ones out there in the limelight,” Wilcox said.
The tournament’s reach for 2023 included schools from Oregon and Washington. From Sequim, Washington to Pendleton, Oregon, boys and girls wrestlers of the Pacific Northwest were accompanied by hundreds of fans from around the region as well.
“We had some interest from Alaska and Hawaii, but because it was such late notice for them, they couldn’t get some of the funding needed,” Wilcox said. “So, they’re planning on attending next year. It’s open to anybody, but it just happens to be only Oregon and Washington now.”
By adding girls wrestling, fans of the sport got to watch some of the best in the Pacific Northwest.
“So, right now we have 60 girls teams that are here competing. … Girls wrestling in the state of Washington, we were one of the top five states to sanction girls wrestling so we have tough wrestlers, and it just made sense to get them out here,” Wilcox said. “We have Toppenish here. Toppenish, their girls are ranked third in the nation.”
Wilcox added that the tournament is meant to be one of the toughest in the state, possibly even tougher than both Oregon and Washington’s state championships.
“Here we will have state champion versus state champion. There will be state champions that won’t make it past semis,” Wilcox said of the tournament’s competition.
Tournament results were unavailable before press time. They will be published in the Jan. 3 edition of The Reflector.
