NCWA returns to Georgia for its Collegiate Cup duals championship, Jan. 24-25

DALLAS – The National Collegiate Wrestling Association’s Collegiate Cup, the first leg of the NCWA Championship Series, begins Friday, Jan. 24, 2014, in Dalton, Ga., as more than 400 wrestlers and coaches return to Georgia’s northwest corner to compete for the favorite’s role toward the national title.


This is the sixth season for the NCWA to contest an official national duals tournament, and the fourth consecutive year in which Dalton’s Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention Center has hosted the two-day event.


Nine of the NCWA’s top 10 teams in the latest coaches’ poll will compete, including the top 5 of No. 1 Grand Canyon, No. 2 Shorter, No. 3 Liberty, No. 4 Apprentice School, and No. 5 Central Florida. In all, 17 teams in the Collegiate Cup field are either ranked in the latest coaches’ poll or are among the top 25 NCWA team-point leaders. The field is broken into eight pools of three teams for Friday’s early round-robin action, with the top two teams in each pool advance to the round of 16 later that day. The finals are at 5 p.m. Saturday.


This year’s Collegiate Cup, formerly known as the NCWA National Duals, is the springboard for national title contention. The Collegiate Cup champion will earn 24 team points, with second place earning 23, third place 22, and so on down to one point for 24th place, which will transfer to the start of the NCWA Championships in March. The new scoring system, voted in place by the coaches last summer, unites the NCWA’s championship events and is unique among all other major-college championship sports. The scoring change has also been adopted by both the national coaches association and the NCAA Wrestling Committee, and will be implemented in the future. The NCWA is the first to utilize it.


Liberty, the 2012 champion and last year’s runner-up, is the tournament’s top seed. Grand Canyon, top-ranked in the latest coaches’ poll and seeded second, is competing in its first Collegiate Cup as it works its way toward NCAA Division I membership. Apprentice, the No. 3 seed, is fresh off a second-place finish out of 14 teams at its Builder Invitational. Central Florida, the fourth-seed, returns 15 national qualifiers and was the coaches’ top-ranked team in the preseason. No. 5-seed Shorter is moving into NCAA Division II membership next year. Middle Tennessee (sixth), Mercer (seventh) and Mott Community College (Mich., eighth) are the other low-seeded teams.


The Collegiate Cup will have a new champion again as defending champion Lindenwood-St. Charles is now an NCAA member and will not compete. No team has repeated as champion in the tournament’s five-year history. Grand Valley State swept National Duals titles in 2007-08, and the Lakers won again in 2009 when the tournament became an official NCWA-sponsored championship event.


During their stay in Dalton, NCWA teams will partner with the City of Refuge as part of the NCWA’s 6:12 Project, a service outreach program in which the wrestlers perform service functions at the sites of the NCWA championship events. Prior to the start of the Collegiate Cup, the NCWA will volunteer time at the City of Refuge’s homeless shelter, and the NCWA will donate 50 percent of all its gate receipts at the tournament to the ministry. More information on the 6:12 Project can be found at http://www.612project.org.


Here is the full 24-team field at the 2014 Collegiate Cup: The Apprentice School (Va.), Auburn, Central Florida, Connecticut, East Tennessee State, Florida Gulf Coast, Grand Canyon, Grand Valley State (Mich.), Liberty, Marion Military Institute (Ala.), Mass. Institute of Technology, Mercer, Miami (Fla.), Middle Tennessee State, Mott Comm. Coll. (Mich.), North Florida, Shorter, South Carolina, South Florida, Southern Virginia, Stony Brook, Tennessee Temple, Texas, Toledo


Here is the full competition schedule for the 2014 Collegiate Cup:

Thu., Jan. 23

4:30 p.m. Open College Workouts, visitors welcome

6:30 p.m. Free Youth Wrestling Clinic (ends at 7:30 p.m.)

Fri., Jan. 24

12:00 p.m. Matches Begin, Round 1

2:00 p.m. Round 2

4:00 p.m. Round 3

6:00 p.m. Round 4

Sat., Jan. 25

9 a.m. Round 5

11 a.m. Round 6

1 p.m. Quarter-Finals

3 p.m. Semi-Finals

5 p.m. Finals/placing matches

6:45 p.m. Championship Awards Presentation

NCWA Coaches Poll (Jan. 14)

1. Grand Canyon (3)

2. Shorter

3. Liberty (4)

4. Apprentice

5. Central Florida

6. U.S. Military Academy Prep

7. Mercer

8. Middle Tennessee

9. Grand Valley State

10. Mott Community College (Mich.)

11. U.S. Naval Academy Prep

12. Marion Military Institute

13. Penn State-Mont Alto

14. Stony Brook

15. U.S. Air Force Academy Prep

16. Penn State-DuBois

17. Douglas College (B.C.)

18. Mass. Inst. of Technology

19. Penn College

20. New Hampshire

21. Florida Gulf Coast

22. North Florida

23. Southern Virginia

24. Md.-Baltimore County

25. South Florida

NCWA Team Points Leaders

1. Apprentice

2. Grand Canyon

3. Liberty

4. Penn State-Mont Alto

5. Central Florida

6. Shorter

7. Mott Community College (Mich.)

8. Mercer

9. Middle Tennessee State

10. Md.-Baltimore County

11. Grand Valley State

12. Florida Gulf Coast

13. New Hampshire

14. North Florida

15. South Florida

16. Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.

17. U.S. Naval Academy Prep

18. Mass. Inst. of Technology

19. Wayne State

20. U.S. Military Academy Prep

21. Connecticut

22. Southern Virginia

23. Saginaw Valley State

24. Stony Brook

25. West Chester