The America’s Cup Wrestling Tournament was started 3 years ago by the NUWAY wrestling association, which is a strictly folkstyle wrestling association. SCWAY (Southern California Wrestling Association for the Youth) was a sister program of MYWA (Michigan Youth Wrestling Association) and was started in Michigan a few years ago and is spreading to the west coast for the serious folkstyle wrestler who dreams of being a high school state champion or college national champion (which means it is strictly the high school and college style of wrestling).
Ernie Ciacio of Clovis, Ca is the director of the SCWAY program and has many partners in this venture, including Paso Robles head coach, Ryan Halsey, and Clovis and Buchanan coaches Steve and Adam Tirapelle. They have joined together to try and form one of the best high school, junior high and elementary tournaments series in the country.
The America’s Cup is a high school and junior high school tournament which consists of a dual tournament on the Friday and Saturday of Memorial Day weekend and closes out with an individual tournament on Sunday.
The competition at the America’s Cup is for the elite wrestlers, and are guaranteed at least eight matches for the weekend, win or lose against the best in California and many other states such as Ohio, Michigan, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and more. A lot of these out of state All-Star teams brought multiple state champions along with them this year and most teams were composed of only state champs from their state.
California had multiple teams from different zones, which had qualifying tournaments or to make the All-Star team for their zone. California had one super All-Star team, who called themselves the Dream Team, who won the America’s Cup over the prime Team Ohio. This tournament will end up being one of the best off-season tournaments in the country for the next three to five years.
Chad Lampe of Dos Pueblos and Colton Lampe of Santa Barbara Junior High wrestled to qualify for a Ca Zone 5 All-Star team, which was made up of the champions from the qualifier for the Santa Barbara, Paso Robles, and Bakersfield area. Both zone 5 teams, sadly yet respectively, did not accomplish as much as they had expected in the team competition on Friday and Saturday.
Chad went 5-1 in the team competition losing only to the California state runner-up. Colton had a rough time on Friday and Saturday going 2-4, but rose to the challenge in the western states individual tournament going 5-1 to take third place.
Chad came out exhausted from his 5-1 record on Friday and Saturday and lost his first match to the southern section 3rd place qualifier with a score of 4-2. After his dad had a serious talk with him, Chad got his head straight and won 6 straight matches to finish 3rd like his younger brother. He came back and beat the same kid who beat him 4-2 in the first match of the individual western states 10-1 and then rolled on to win the losers bracket and represent Santa Barbara, Dos Pueblos and the Lampe wrestling family as well.
His dad says “this is a can’t miss tournament if you want to get better for 60 dollars for 13 matches.”
