Like a circus, wrestling directs your attention to one, two, four, or more rings with participants in the center, officials and coaches directing the action … and a small army of contributors that make the spectacle go. While they often come in husband-and-wife pairs, our volunteer honorees this year are a brother and sister team from Roanoke, Joyce and Jeff Edmondson.

Joyce eagerly joined the family’s immersion in wrestling. Both of her brothers wrestled and both of her parents were concession stand volunteers. During her high-school summers, she got her feet wet, keeping time and score for summer tournaments before graduating from Northside High School in 1974. She stayed in the area, graduating from Virginia Tech in 1978, and launching her long career as an elementary school teacher at Mason Cove Elementary School in Roanoke County.

There was a hiatus for both Jeff and Joyce when they stepped back in the late 1980s to take care of their parents, while both working full time, but they rejoined their sport in the 1990s.

For almost 40 years, the constant in her life has been serving wrestling. She has been the ultimate event planner, taking on a dizzying series of behind-the-scenes roles and tasks. In addition to scoring and keeping time, she ran tournaments in both the winter and summer responsible for preparing coaches packets, directing volunteers, checking in teams, setting up for preliminaries and finals, and arranging the awards presentations. She has been a pioneer in the adoption of the Trackwrestling computer program, which has radically improved the recording of action in tournaments.

The range of her activities has been prodigious. Her resume is heavy with high school duals, regional tournaments and state tournaments, but it also includes spectacles with names like “River Rumble,” “Titan Toughman,” and “Knights of the Round Table.” She has also been a familiar presence at college competitions, working at Ferrum College, Washington and Lee University, Roanoke College, and the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament at Virginia Tech.

The sheer volume of her work, and her steady excellence over decades, has led to leadership and recognition. She has been a member of the Roanoke Valley Wrestling Association since the 1990s and has served as secretary, vice president, co-president, chair of the scholarship committee and chair of the banquet committee. All while continuing to make the wrestling wheels turn all along the southern Blue Ridge region of the Commonwealth, which earned her induction into the RVWA Hall of Fame in 2007.