Team Lightning has using a split format at the Buhler Open for the past several years. There are several other events around the state that have used, or are currently using this format. I'm interested in getting some feedback about how people feel about split format tournaments.

These are the positives that I see:

• Allows most families to cut their time at the tournament in 1/2, giving them the rest of the day for other activities.

• Reduces the crowd size at the tournament. This year's Buhler tournament had 549 entries (and very few scratches), and the only time that congestion was a factor was during the late morning when there was some overlap between the afternoon participants arriving before the morning participants were done.

• Reduces down time between matches. I've seen kids wait as long as 4-5 hours between matches at regular tournaments. This shouldn't happen at split format tournaments.

Here are a few negatives:

• More work for the tournament host, dealing with additional weigh-ins, scheduling to avoid the conflicting problems of ending the first session too soon vs. starting the second session late, and getting volunteers back to the tables for the second session.

• A longer day for coaches and club directors, since they have to stay for both sessions as well as any dead time between sessions.

What other positives/negatives do you see? Which format type do you prefer? Why? All honest and constructive feedback is appreciated.

Mike,

Split tournaments are the ONLY way to go. While I feel a wrestler can be burned out in many various ways by the time he gets to high school, what our club found was it was the parents that burned out much earlier because of all day tournaments. It was too easy for a parent that was used to being in an over crowded gym from daylight to dusk to let their child go play bb and be gone for an hour on Saturdays.
One thing we learned about split tournaments last year was in order to allow the use of larger mats for the most ages of wrestlers the split of age groups should occur after all the entries are received. At the D2 north subs the 10 and under was the largest age group. Had the host club known this was going to be the case they would have divided the ages differently. What we proposed at our district meeting this year was that the age groups and their splits would be announced at the seeding meeting. This would allow us to use full size mats for all ages down thru 10 and under and possibly some of the 8 and under. Unfortunately, this was voted down. We'll make another run at it next year.

I agree that the split format could help wreslers from getting burned out after spending 10+ hours at a tournament, especially when they only have 1 or 2 other wrestlers in their bracket and do very little wrestling in that 10+ hours time. We have weighed in at 7:30 in the morning and not wrestled until 1:00 in the afternoon. There has to be a way to change this.

As for table workers, weigh in people, ect, split their time in half too. I know not every club has the luxury of plenty of workers, but the parents from other clubs who help would be there either morning or afternoon and could work at those times.

And for the morning running late and the afternoon being scheduled too early...for the few times that may happen will not be a factor to most if all the other tournament times have been cut down to 4-5 hours.

I say Split Format all the way!!! Thank you for the intrest.

What about those of us that have an 8 U and 14 U - does this add to the time spent in the gym for us - instead of being done at 3:00 - 4:00 does that mean 7 or 8 o'clock? And how about the 8 year old who has to wait until their older brother is done at the late hour or worse, the 14 year old you have to drag out of bed at 5:00 a.m. because you are too far away from home to go back and get him later in the day?

It doesn't matter to me because my 14 year old will be in high school next year - which will complicate our lives even more - but what about those who still have a couple of years left with two boys wrestling?

Just some input from a tired Wrestling Mom!

Mike
I am a long time proponent of the split format tournament as well as other ways to make the pre-state tournament series tournaments easier and more fan and wrestler friendly. When i was coaching high school, i often had kids who did not go out because their parents and themselves had bad experiences with the pre-dawn to past sundown tournament nightmares. As a wrestling addict, i was in my element with the long days and honestly did not know any other way of doing things. My eyes were opened a great deal after spending time in Nebraska and California. In Nebraska we had more of a slotted tournament format where age groups had a couple hour window for wrestling, the weigh in nightmare was eliminated by weighing in the kids as they come in, grouping them in to 4, 5 man round robin brackets and then keeping the kids matside and wrestling the brackets off, it was about 30 minutes in between matches and the stay was about 2 to 2.5 hours at the most. In Cali, we had the straight split format, but the kids weighed in at the same time, so the time was no different. In both states, the entry numbers were controlled and in california, the wrestling associations had groups of people that travelled place to place to run off tournaments, they had the scoreboards, tables, bands, bout cards, all of the above and hauled it around in a trailer, it was great for consistency but what a job. Kansas by far has the best wrestling i have seen in my travels, i think at times though we tend not to think outside the box of doing it a bit different. Thanks for the forum
Klint Deere

A negative downfall might be in the "profits" for the host club if they run their own concession stand.

I also believe this could be a solution to the long days for the majority of the people at our weekend tournaments. Just this weekend we left a tournament just before 5PM after my son's last match and he only wrestled three times. He had to wait approximately five hours between his semi-final and final match. Our daughter started her basketball game an hour after his second match and they were home two hours before he wrestled his final match. I agree with sportsfan02 that wrestling loses families to basketball due to these long tournaments.

I do understand what Mike and wrestlingmom have said about the potential longer days for tournament workers, coaches, and families with children in both sessions. But last year Mike said he thought that about 80% of the people would see their time cut by about 50%. If that is true, I think that this is the direction youth wrestling needs to go to keep new families involved and to attract new families. I was at a tournament a couple of years ago at the beginning of the year and a new mother from another club was standing by her son's bracket and asking me when her son's matches would occur. She wanted to know if her son would be done in a couple of hours. Her son's bracket extended to over match 100. When I told her what that could mean, she told me that this would be their last tournament. I tried to tell her that the wait was worth it but she would not buy it. I know for our son the wait has been worth it but there are times that you do question it and wonder if we could plan for a shorter tournament day.

The post from illegalhold does raise some questions. Can we learn from what some of the other states are doing for their tournaments? I do like the split tournament format. I know it is more demanding on the coaches, table workers, tournament directors, etc. What it does do for the sport is help keep some wrestlers and parents excited about the sport. I think wrestling more than any other sport loses kids to burnout. I think the reason is the time that the sport demands. In KS we wrestle from November-April, then go into Freestyle/Greco Roman through July. For the kids that want to do other sports as well it is difficult for them to justify all the time they spend in wrestling and inturn get burned out. If we somehow made the tournaments better I think it would help. One thing that we do forget through all of this is that the families want to see the kids wrestle too. When the families have to sit for 3-4 hours between matches it starts to wear on them. If you only had a couple of hours to wait around it would be easier for more family members to watch. This should also help the popularity of the sport as well.

I have heard from several parents that have made the trip to Nebraska to wrestle, that they liked the design of their tournaments. I am not saying that is the way to go, but maybe a change for our tournaments is in order. Possibly it is using the split tournament format.

Here's another vote for split tournaments. We actually decided against going to a couple of tournaments this year because they were not splits. We just can't stand those 7AM - 4 or 5 PM days anymore.

I wish we had more opportunity to choose like ksdave has suggested. Our family would definitely choose the split tournament if the other aspects of the tournaments were pretty equal. I am not sure that there are any tournaments in the Johnson County-Kansas City area that use the split format. It just has not caught on in this area of Kansas. I understand that there are several tournaments that use the format in Southern Kansas.

wrestlingmom, I am not sure if you are aware of it but according to the calendar on this site Ottawa has changed their tournament from 2/28 to the next weekend 3/6, the same week as Wichita-Park City. That leaves 2/28 weekend open. The Maize Invitational is on 2/28 and it is a split tournament. You might really like this one because it has the 6, 8, and 14 year olds wrestling in the morning session. I think it is on the same weekend as the High School State so you could also go watch that tournament in the afternoon if you wanted to. I was looking at the Maize results last year and in my son's bracket it seemed that most of the competition that went to Wichita-Park City was at Maize.

We just got back 15 minutes ago from a split tournament in Platte City, MO.. My son's age group started at 1 o'clock. He was in a 8 man bracket like normal. His first match was number six, his second match #28 and his championship match #58. There were a couple scratch matches on his mat but really probably less than normal. He was done with his final match at 4:15. We felt so good getting done in 3 hours and 15 minutes that we decided to stick around and watch a few more matches of wrestlers that we knew as the whole tournament was winding down. We left the auxillary gym into the main gym where it was winding down in there too and people were standing around and in good spirits as they were leaving. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood especially the coaches and tournament workers. We were on the road at 4:30 PM, in 3.5 hours after the start of the tournament.

I thought it was great. My son loved competing at that pace. On the way home he said that was really a fun tournament. I really don't think that kids enjoy sitting around gyms from 8 AM to 4 PM or later to wrestle 3 to 4 matches. I hope that we will catch on to this split tournament format in the Johnson County Kansas area for Kids tournaments. I really just do not see that much downside to this scenario. I know we loved it and from all appearances everyone else there did too. All I can say is good job, Platte City.

I must agree with Vince, and disagree with anyone that doesn't like the split format. Here's why:

1). It doens't make the tournament last any longer. Your day will be the same if you have kids competing in both sessions.

2). The wrestlers aren't waiting 45 minutes to 2 hours between matches. This is hard for any age to "keep their head in the game".

3). As a coach, it lightens my load. I have half as many wrestlers to watch for bout #'s.

I have been to numerous split format tournaments, and I have zero complaints about them. It is the only way to run a great tournament. Don't believe it? Ask any wrestler who has competed in one.

Another vote for the split tournament here. I know that when my son has to wait for two or three hours between bouts he complains that he is bored and wants to go home. Another advantage would be that my wife could sleep in on some Saturday mornings (She gets cranky when she dosen't get her beauty sleep).

Hey mike! is ur son alex wrestling n e more? and if so wut weight and age im at 14U 175? can u get back to me on that?

Seems like a good time to bump this back to the top. After reading this again, I did not see very many reasons for not having split tournaments. The norm still seems to be non-split tournaments. What are some more negatives and if there aren't any then why don't we see more split tournaments?

You go JG!

I have always been against split tournaments and I always will be, thankfully plenty of clubs in Kansas stick with the more traditional full tournament.

Mill Valley will be utilizing the split format this year. I have read every post and I find the support and the data to be heavily in favor of this type of format especially if you anticipate more than 300 kids. A 480 kid tournament with 8 surfaces will take 7 hours. We had nearly 800 at Mill Valley last year and with 12 surfaces and it took us 8 hours and the crowd congestion was unbearable. We anticipate great success breaking from the "traditional" format.

Nigel, can you give details/reasons for this? I'm just looking for opinions no matter what they are.

I am in RH but i heard that Mulvane is going to run a Novice Tournament similar to what they do in Nebraska or SD that can get 300 kids done in less than 3 hours. They are afraid of being laughed at but said you should see how fast these tournaments go. I dont know how they do it but it sounds interesting and at least someone is thinking outside of the box. We have talked to some parents who dont want to get involved in wrestling becuase it is all day long. We live in a different society now and not everyone is going to give up an entire saturday or sunday to watch there kid wrestle for 12 minutes total in an 8 hour day if he gets 4 matches. think about it, 4 complete matches is 12 minutes and you sit from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm.