Tournament Director Barry Boustead is a Delta Air Lines Captain, living in Arlington, Texas, flying B-767ER aircraft from New York’s JFK airport to Europe and Bombay, India. He has been married to his wife, Toni, for 30 years and has one son, Shannon. Shannon was formerly a Texas wrestler who is married and living with his wife, Ann, in Dallas where he is attending Southwestern Medical School and she is working on her PhD. 

Barry has been involved with Texas wrestling at all levels since the late 1980’s. He started coaching with Larry Aust at the Poly America Wrestling Club in Grand Prairie, Texas and subsequently became the tournament director for the Annual New Years Cotton Bowl Classic, hosted by the Texas Amateur Wrestling Association. During that period, he worked with several other wrestling supporters in pushing for the adoption of the sport in the Arlington Independent School District and support for the adoption of the sport throughout the state. This effort culminated in 1991 with the AISD school board adding wrestling to the district sports program and the start of one of the toughest and most successful districts in the state. He has been one of the announcers (along with Nate Kempler) for the televised District Championships ever since the program began. The University Interscholastic League (UIL) for high school athletics adopted the sport of wrestling in 1999, adopting both boys and girls divisions. 

After running the Cotton Bowl Classic tournament for many years, Barry was successful in getting the University of Oklahoma to travel south in 1998 to conduct a few duals in Arlington. Oklahoma Head Coach Jack Spates brought Wisconsin, Brown, and Virginia with him and the first college competition in the Dallas / Ft. Worth Metroplex began. Oklahoma and Brown will be returning for the 8^th time and Wisconsin has made all but one of the annual events. Since the initial 4-team competition, the Hilton Arlington / Cliff Keen Athletic Lone Star Duals has grown to 22 Universities, 24 HS boys’ teams, and a HS girls’ invitational with 16 competitors in each of the 10 weight classes. The event has become one of the premier dual team competitions in the country, and has hosted many of the very best wrestling teams and competitors in all divisions of college wrestling. Teams like Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, Iowa State, Michigan, Wisconsin, Purdue, Cornell, Central Oklahoma (multiple time D-II national Champs), Wartburg (D-III National Champs), and Central Florida (NCWA National Champs) have all been participants in this event. Outstanding wrestlers at the duals have included many NCAA Champions, but only one repeat winner – 2004 Olympic Champion Cale Sanderson! 

Hosted by the best group of volunteers in the country, this event has been getting better every year. We look for that to continue into the future and we are excited about the prospects for continued success and growth.