From Leashes To Singlets:

Wicomico Youth & Civic Center makes transformation from Poodle Show to Wrestling Championship

(Salisbury, MD) On Friday, April 29^th the Wicomico Youth & Civic Center will bid a fond farewell to poodles and their handlers as they prepare to welcome over 1500 wrestlers and their families for the Middle Atlantic Wrestling Association (MAWA) Eastern Nationals this weekend.  Wrestlers from all over the Mid-Atlantic Region will converge on the mats of the Normandy Arena as they compete for the championship in a wide range of age and weight classes. 

In just one week’s time, the Wicomico Youth & Civic Center, and Wicomico County as a whole will have played host to visitors traveling from as close as the Mid-Atlantic Region to as far as international locales including Japan.  Both the Poodle Show and MAWA Wrestling Eastern Nationals, brought to the County by Wicomico Tourism, have just about sold out the area’s hotel rooms according to the local Hotel/Motel Association and will have an estimated $3.5+ million economic impact. 

For the Wicomico Youth & Civic Center (WY&CC), such large events back to back are not out of the norm.  Although well-known for its entertainment events such as the upcoming Barney’s Birthday Bash or the Broadway in Salisbury season finale Fiddler on the Roof, the WY&CC hosts multiple sporting events and trade shows throughout the year. 

As such, the building is accustomed to short turnover windows.  The transformation from poodles to wrestlers will be completed in as little as twelve hours.  On Friday evening, WY&CC staff and a crew of supervised community service workers will begin intensively cleaning the building and parking lot, removing the field of sod which was laid in the Normandy Arena for the poodles and their handles to have the best footing possible and replace the sod with large wrestling mats.  They will work late into the night so that when the first wrestlers arrive on Saturday morning the building is ready to welcome them.