NCAA wrestling championships returning to Pennsylvania in 2025
The NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships will be returning to Pennsylvania in 2025. The NCAA announced on Wednesday it had selected the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia as the location for the championships in five years.
The event will be hosted by the University of Pennsylvania in conjunction with Drexel University and PHL Sports.
Philadelphia last hosted the wrestling championships in 2011, when Penn State won its first of four straight national championships. The 2011 title was the program’s first under head coach Cael Sanderson, who has since led the team to seven more.
The state hosted the most recent championships in 2019. The 2020 event was canceled due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Other wrestling championship sites announced Wednesday were Tulsa in 2023, Kansas City in 2024 and Cleveland in 2026. Next year’s championships are slated to be held in St. Louis, followed by Detroit.
The 2025 return to Philadelphia will mark 120 years since the city hosted the first intercollegiate tournament in 1905, which took place on Penn’s campus.
“Penn Wrestling is thrilled to partner in hosting the NCAA Championships, returning to Philadelphia following a record-setting event in 2011,” Penn head coach Roger Reina said in a release. “I was honored to serve as chair of the Local Organizing Committee for those 2011 Championships and can’t wait to be on the floor coaching Penn wrestlers in 2025. Our region is well-known as a wrestling hotbed at every level of competition from youth, to scholastic, collegiate, and Olympic levels. We will celebrate both Penn Wrestling’s monumental legacy and our region’s incredible love for our great sport.”
The host arena — the Wells Fargo Center — recently completed a $265M renovation project, which included the world’s first center-hung 4K Kinetic video board, which is 65% larger than the previous version.
The 2011 iteration of the event in Philadelphia set a three-day attendance record.
This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 2:48 PM.
