In southwest Minnesota, the name Louwagie practically rolls off the tongue. Such is not the case for Eric Strauch, who has served as the public address announcer for the Minnesota State Wrestling Tournament every year since 2020 when the state tournament was degraded into an unrecognizable shell of itself because of the pandemic. What Strauch doesn’t know is that Louwagie has a soft “g” at the end.
“It will be corrected from now on,” said Strauch, who, you guessed it, doesn’t like the sound of his own voice.
Any die-hard high school wrestling fan between New Ulm and the South Dakota border knows how to pronounce Louwagie, but those who have been to the state tournament sometime this decade might not know Strauch’s name. And they wouldn’t know him if they ran into him outside Grand Casino Arena. But his voice certainly would ring a bell.
Strauch remembers 2020 well, as he called his own number to do the announcing in the St. Michael-Albertville High School gymnasium.
“I knew there was not a lot of people there because of COVID, but for the people that are here, I’m like, ‘Give me that microphone so it at least feels somewhat normal,’” he said. “I’ve grown to love the sport of wrestling. For me, it’s about the event. The state tournament, man, it’s as much a party as it is a sports event — that’s when I know I’m doing my job right.”
Strauch does his best to keep the large crowds involved, whether it be with certain music he plays over the loud speakers, or simply the inflection in his voice.
“In the beginning it’s slow, and then it slowly ramps up to where … when we’re just about ready to go, I play sing-a-long songs,” he said, “and dance-along songs — things that start getting the crowd involved.”
Most wrestling fans might assume the sport is in Strauch’s blood, but nothing could be further from the truth. Going through high school in east St. Paul, Strauch didn’t give the sport a second thought, focusing instead on baseball and soccer. His first meaningful contact with wrestling didn’t come until later in life.
“I have never wrestled a day in my life,” he said. “My entry into the wrestling world began with nephews of mine who wrestled — in Forest Lake and Stillwater. Trying to be the good uncle, I spent a lot of Sundays at tournaments, supporting them, cheering them on.”
That is how Strauch started learning about the sport, but he had no idea that would be the start of a relationship with wrestling that grew and grew. About four years after starting to watch his nephews, he caught on with Track Wrestling. He joined a friend to help work The Clash tournament in Rochester, which is where he got his first taste of a major wrestling tournament.
“It was the year that Tyler Eischens beat the number one and number two kids in the nation, and the place went bananas,” Strauch said. “I was like, ‘This is awesome, I want to be a part of this. I started working with him running wrestling tournaments with the livestream and all that stuff.”
That would be the first of many tournaments Strauch accompanied his friend to; eventually, he picked up the ins and outs of running a tournament, and all the while unknowingly fell in love with a sport he knew nothing about as a youth.
Putting on a show within a show in Grand Casino Arena every winter, Strauch said, takes a team and it is a true coordinated effort.
“The people around me are truly the experts of a tournament like this,” he said. “I literally come in and my only role is the microphone and to be one of the voices.”
Strauch does public address work for a number of events and even runs high school tournaments every single Saturday and some Fridays during wrestling season. He also partners with the Gophers for their Christmas tournament.
A Cottage Grove resident, Strauch finds time between winter tournaments to work in finance with the Anderson Windows
