Kansas had a great group of wrestlers at Iowa and i can say the place was great to hold it, But it was ran worse than anything I have ever saw and I have been to a lot ot meets in the last eighteen years. Talk to any coach you can that was there and they will tell you the same thing. one of my wrestlers started on mat 15 in the morrning and it was over at noon, they came back at 6 to wrestle again and he was to wrestle on matt 9 match 9015 there were all the boys in the same age group waiting along with there coaches and then they came along and told us theses matches were being moved to matt 7, so every one moved to matt 7 now this was about 7 at night, at 9 oclock the first boy in the 140 weight group wrestled, how can you warm up for two hours thinking your up next or at lease your told that.after that I went down to the 8 and under where one of our kids were going to wrestle and when he was up a man came over and told us they were moving the match to a diffent matt, so we moved and after we got to this matt it was being used and so he told us lets go bach to matt 1.where we started. I have been thinking alday and any body that has ever put on a meet knows this should never happen, you have to remember this in a national tournament. All the coaches that were upset said that it was better than last year but they should take notes how Kansas ran it when they had it and they wish it was back in kansas, that made me feel good and I hope any body that was there writes a letter here and mabe someone that was in charge from Iowa will read it and change things.
Iowa worse wrestling Tournamemt

Reno was great as usual.

I was at Iowa for the last two years. Last year it was probably the worst ran tournament I had ever been to. I recieved a letter of apology from the Iowa wrestling association assuring me it would be better this year. We decided to go again because Reno would be too expensive. This years tournament was the second worst tournamnet I had ever been to. It was a split format which accomplished nothing.9am -1pm midgets and cadets,this ran to almost 2pm.- 1pm-4pm novice and schoolboy, 5pm -conclusion all wrestlers. My son wrestled his first three matches between 2-6pm and made it to the finals. we figured we were done for the day, wrong thet were going to finish his bracket that night. about 10;45 pm he finally got to wrestle his finals match after being moved to three different mats. by the time he got his medal and his picture it was 11:45pm. This also happened to another of our wrestlers his medal match was #5045 at # 5039 he started getting himself ready at #5044 they changed the number to 9025 and wrestled through 9065, then 3 hours later they got baack to 5045. this was at about 10:30pm. Then our other kid went 1-1 on saturday matches 7 hours apart, was there until almost midnight and wrestled again at 9am.This turned into an 18 hour day at a wrstling tournament. 1400 kids 20 full size mats and no clue how to make it work. They need the people that run Kansas state tournament to handle this and we would have been done by 7pm on saturday.Next year we are going to the mid america classic.

Tell this to the people here in Kansas that swear by the split format.

Completely different situation. You can't compare this to the way most KS split tournaments are run.

On the way home Sunday I figure that they had over 2 hours of empty mats during the day on Saturday. Even at our worst we still got everyone out of the Expo by 9 pm. We still had 1400 wrestlers, and only had 14 mats to wrestle on. The key is to never have empty mats. But when you run a split like they did and you get done early you have empty mats.

We lost to wrestlers Saturday night who were sitting in the stands 14-15 matches out and then there mat jump to their matches with no warm up. They wrestled the bracket then went back 14 matches numbers. Made no since at all.


Ned

it ran bad some of the midget kids last mach was at ten.

I guess I should but my two cents in...

After last years tournament our club agreed to not go back to Iowa… but I made this mistake of hoping that with experience they would improve and not have the same problems.

I hate to admit this but I was wrong.

I HAD A KID WIN 5 MATCHES IN THE CHAMPIONSHIP SIDE AND DID NOT PLACE.

At weigh ins they had his down as a school boy 115 when he was supposed to be a cadet 112. After getting that changed the next morning we noticed his name was not on any brackets. After a nice meeting with the head table he got pig tailed in to a 64 man bracket. He went on to win his first 5 matches. He actually wrestled 5 times between 10am and 12:30am.

After the last match at 12:30 I took him and the rest of the morning session wrestlers back to the hotel and when I received a phone call that our wrestler had missed his last match. I was thinking to myself there is no in a tournament this big in a 64 man bracket they could wrestle all the way to the finals in the Saturday morning session alone.

Once I got back to the UNI Dome and after talking to the head table ( I was camped out there for 3 days) We find out that Our wrestler was actually entered in to two weight classes 112 and 119 in Cadets (even though he wasn’t listed on either bracket.

The evening session (6pm) was crazy and pointless… everyone in the session only wrestled once but the “system” (if one was used) kept us there till after 9pm.

The UNI Dome is a great place to have the nationals but that was the only good thing about the tournament. The stadium was never remotely close to full, no one really knew when they where were about to wrestle, when they could leave, or when their next match was.

In the morning session they had 20 mats. Out of the 20 mats numbers 1-20 6 of them were mat 5.

Their were no Opening ceremony, Pomp and Circumstance, and the All American parade on the second day lacked half the wrestlers and was only seen by a few hundred spectators.

I could go on and on but ultimately…
I CAN NO LONGER RECOMMEND GOIN TO THE NATIONALS IN IOWA.

I've helped out with split tournaments in the past that have run smoothly, but when you have a National level tournament, you shouldn't do a split tournament, you should have enough mats to run everyone during the day.