Celebrating its 16th annual competition, high school wrestlers from all over the state and elsewhere recently gathered at the Kitsap County Fairgrounds to compete in the HammerHead Invitational Wrestling Tournament.

Event organizer Marc Kaye said: “This was the biggest HammerHead tournament ever in sixteen years. I invited something like 106 schools, and 99 showed up. Next year we’ll be taking over a second building because we’ve really outgrown where we are.”

Kaye said the event is the biggest invitational in the area, and is attracting schools from many states, as well as British Columbia, Canada.

While Kitsap schools appear to be working through building years, having previously won state and local titles, Central Kitsap High scored highest in total results for Kitsap schools, coming in 14th out of 99 teams for girls, and 21st out of 99 for boys.

The South Kitsap High School boys team placed 16th overall, while Bremerton placed 36th with North Kitsap coming in 37th. Klahowya came in 40th, and Bainbridge Island came in 45th.

South Kitsap’s girls team came in 17th. Bremerton’s and Klahowya’s girls teams came in 27th and 28th, with Bainbridge’s girls placing 29th.

Syracuse High School from Utah participated for the first time in eight years and won the competition.

“There weren’t any standout performances over all” by locals, Kaye said “But the fundamentals of wrestling were absolutely on display, and wrestling is the kind of sport where strength builds to strength. It’s not just whether you win, but actually how you play the game that counts.”

Jericho Diego, who along with Alejandro De La Pena coaches wrestling at Central Kitsap, said of the teams: “They stuck with fundamentals, and really worked very hard. We just saw the scores on [Monday] morning, and we were happy to see how we’d done.”