OLD ORCHARD BEACH — The third annual Rumble at The Ballpark is less than a month away and there is still time for high school and college-age wrestlers to register to compete.

The event, which is sponsored by Moriarty Electric, will be held on July 20. The scheduled start time for the tournament is 1 p.m. with the finals expected to be around 6 p.m at the historic stadium in Old Orchard Beach.

“We will have wrestlers from all across Maine as well as Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York at this year’s tournament,” said tournament Director Pat McDonald, who is a former sports editor of the Journal Tribune. “I have heard from people from all over New England with interest in coming to this year’s tournament. This should be the best event we’ve had since we began this three years ago and there is still time for wrestlers to sign up.”

There will once again be two divisions at the tournament. The high school division will be for wrestlers from eighth through 12th grade in the 2019-20 school year. There will also be brackets for college-age wrestlers — although athletes don’t have to be competing for a college team to wrestle at The Ballpark.

The event will also feature a one-hour clinic that will be held from 11 a.m. to noon at The Ballpark. This year’s clinic will be run by former University of Buffalo wrestler Colt Cotten, who qualified for the NCAA Division I tournament while competing for the Bulls. Cotten was also a four-time state medalist in Pennsylvania, where he made the finals during his senior year. The clinic will be focused on riding.

“We are thrilled to have Colt lead our clinic this year. He has a resume that most wrestlers can only dream of and we believe he can provide the wrestlers at the clinic some valuable insights into how they can improve their top wrestling,” said McDonald. “Colt has spent a ton of time teaching wrestlers of all ages in Maine through his Rawhide Wrestling Clinics. We are happy that he has donated his time to help the wrestlers at The Ballpark.”

The third annual tournament will also switch to a double-elimination format this summer, which McDonald believes will take the event to another level.

“The first two years we went with a round-robin format. This year, we have decided to make it double elimination and we truly believe that will increase the competition and make for a much better tournament,” said McDonald.

The costs for this year’s event are $20 for clinic only; $30 for tournament only and $40 for both the clinic and tournament. If you sign up for the tournament or do both the clinic and tournament, you will receive a commemorative t-shirt. The first-place trophies for this year’s tournament are once again commemorative baseball bats.

All proceeds from the event are donated to local high school wrestling programs. Following last year’s tournament, the Rumble at The Ballpark donated $200 each to Biddeford, Kennebunk, Massabesic and Sanford high school teams.

“It’s really important to us to give back to the wrestling community. We were thrilled to split $800 between four local programs and we are hoping to increase the level of donations each year,” said McDonald.

Wrestlers can sign up for the event at rebrand.ly/RumbleattheBallpark2019. For more information, contact McDonald at rumbleatballpark@gmail.com.

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