USA Wrestling’s Senior Nationals, featuring nation’s top Olympic-caliber wrestlers, set for Coralville, Iowa, October 9-11

USA Wrestling has announced that it will host its Senior Nationals, featuring the nation’s top international-style wrestlers, at the new Xtream Arena & GreenState Family Fieldhouse in Coralville, Iowa, October 9-11. The event will highlight competition in the three Olympic disciplines: men’s freestyle, women’s freestyle and Greco-Roman. 

The Iowa City/Coralville region is considered one of the world’s hotbeds for wrestling, and has hosted numerous major USA Wrestling competitions in the past. Think Iowa City, the convention and visitors bureau for the Iowa City/Coralville region, is serving as the local organizing committee.

“USA Wrestling is very excited to again partner with Think Iowa City on another one of our country’s significant wrestling competitions. With their long history of staging some of our sport’s best wrestling events, we are confident that the Senior Nationals will be another one of those awesome experiences for our sport. Obviously, we will work closely with the local organizing committee, the local public health officials and others to insure athlete safety is paramount. We are hopeful that this will be a milestone for our sport as we battle back from this worldwide pandemic,” said Rich Bender, USA Wrestling Executive Director.

This will be the first major Senior-level event which will be hosted by USA Wrestling since the postponement or cancellation of much of its 2020 national event schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The event will be conducted following the requirements of the state and local health authorities, as well as using the safety provisions of the USA Wrestling Return to Events Guidelines. The local organizing committee is in regular communication with its partners at Johnson County public health and University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. USA Wrestling and the local organizers will monitor data and local trends closely leading up to the event.

This will be the fourth time the USA Wrestling’s Senior Nationals has been held in the area, as Iowa City hosted the 1975, 1977 and 1978 U.S. Greco-Roman Senior Nationals. Other major Senior-level USA Wrestling events held in Iowa City were the record-setting 2012 U.S. Olympic Team Trials and the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, as well as the 1983 Freestyle World Team Trials. Along with United World Wrestling, USA Wrestling also helped bring the 2018 Freestyle World Cup to Iowa City, which was considered one of the most successful World Cups ever.

Iowa City is the home of the University of Iowa’s wrestling program, which annually has the highest attendance of any Div. I wrestling team. The NCAA Div. I Championships were hosted in Iowa City five times (1959, 1986, 1991, 1995, 2001). The region also hosted the largest-attended college wrestling event ever, when the Grapple on the Gridiron match between Iowa and Oklahoma State drew 42,287 fans in Kinnick Stadium on November 14, 2015. Wrestling is also very popular on the youth and high school levels all across Iowa.

“We are excited to once again welcome back our friends at USA Wrestling. Our community has been recognized many times over as Wrestling City USA and we aim to keep it that way by helping USA Wrestling deliver another memorable event,” said Josh Schamberger, President, Think Iowa City.

“Senior Nationals will be one of the very first major events we are looking forward to hosting in Xtream Arena.,” said Coralville Mayor John Lundell. “Our athletes and coaches will know this location well as it is within 100 yards of the hotel they have used during the 2012 and 2016 Olympic Team Trials and 2018 UWW Freestyle World Cup. I look forward to welcoming them all to Coralville this October.”

Coralville’s new Xtream Arena will be officially opened in September, with seating capacity of 5,100. There will be as many as six mats used during the tournament, with the championship finals on one mat.

Fans will be able to order tickets starting at 12:00 noon on August 3 by visiting www.xtreamarena.com. Ticket prices for the Senior Nationals will be:

• All Session Adult $45

• All Session Youth $25

• Single Day Adult $35

• Single Day Youth $15

• All Session Coaches $20 (must have current USAW Leader Membership)

The complete competition schedule is currently being finalized, and will be announced next week. An events website for the Senior Nationals will also be posted when the schedule is published.

The event will be broadcast by FloWrestling.

For more information, contact Gary Abbott, USA Wrestling at gabbott@usawrestling.org or via cell phone at 719-659-9637 or Luke Eustice, Manager of Sport Development at Think Iowa City at luke@thinkiowacity.com or via phone at 319-337-6592.