all 14u matches in dist.2 were wrestled on half mats today,thought that was bad decision,numerous matches were stopped with interference from bordering mats also seemed alot of kids were hurt by smaller area to work,,is there not anything that could of been done to not allow this to happen,noticed all 12u wrestled big mats in aux gym?????????

The 14U division should always be wrestled on full mats! Why D-2 chooses to do this is beyond me.

District 1 also wrestled on half mats for 14U-Except for the 140 and up. I agree that all 14U should be on full mats.

lets put all age groups on full mats I say! Then we will have to petition the schools that we have host these tournaments to expand their facilities to accomodate and or lose a lot of seating in the stands. Otherwise lets find arena size venues to host our qualifiers in order to accomodate the full mats for all. I guess in order to do that the entry fees would need to increase to about $40 per wrestler in order to pay for such a venue.

Maybe a simple fix for the aformentioned problem could have been to change the split session to 8U, 10U and 14U in the morning with 12U and 16U in the afternoon putting the 14U and 16U age groups on the 3 full mats in the aux gym. I only witnessed a couple of problems with the 14U's on the half mats and for the most part everything went smoothly. Great job Winfield Club!

Or, they could do that!

Sport0, you do have an opinion! I am proud of you! We ran a split session in D1 and still had to use a 1/2 mat for 14U. Very disappointing. In the early session the safety area was adequate but the mat space appeared VERY small for the 8U and 10 U.
Sport0, I am stalking you and believe or not I agree with your proclamation.

I guess you missed my idea or opinion that we remove the mandatory participation in Southern Plains camp and take the $6000.00 we are spending on School Boy Duels and use it to fund the camp? I would guess that we could make the camp free for about all takers if we did that.

its stupid!

I saw a couple matches where someone would be losing by a couple points and come out on top, just about to pin their guy.. and the match next door would interfere and they stopped it.
the guy on top ended up losing.

so..I'm all for full mats.
haha

I watched the NCAA wrestling championships and they still go out of bounds even at that level. Everyone has coached a match and yelled "keep him in bounds". Unless Ross Perot becomes a huge fan of wrestling and single-handedly fund USA wrestling, we will probably have to "make do".

The problem Winfield had is that we didn't know until a few days before the tournament that the High School had two performances on Friday and Saturday. They told us that we had to be out by 5:30p.m. It forced us to utilize as many mats as we could so that we could be out of there on time. Which by the way we barely made. This was the first time to use the other gym and was a learning experience in itself. The flyers had already been sent out and it was too late of a notice to try and change things. That's is the only reason that 12 and under wrestled on full mats in the MORNING session. This is also the reason that we could not use the gym to allow kids to run if they were overweight.

Ok I found something I agree with Will on. Kids in the 12U and up groups SHOULD be wrestling on full mats. And while I am not big on split format tournaments, if that is what is required in order to make this happen then by all means do it that way.

On a side note. Its been my experience as an official that no matter how big the mat is, the kids are going to find their way to the edge of it. Some times its a tactical thing which by definition is really fleeing. Other times its just the way the action dictates. It drives me crazy that kids go off the mat but it happens and sometimes I have to award fleeing calls. I think its up to club reps to make sure that only clubs that have the venues capable or running such a tournament are awarded. We all know that clubs want these tournaments so they can make money. If you continue to allow them to have these without proper space, then half mats is what you are going to get. I remember last year at D1 at MANU was terrible and that is because they had full mats but they tried to fit too many mats on the floor.

Winfields facility is plenty big enough to hold the event. We've been hosting subs and dist. since I've been there. (5 years). The problem we ran into is the time frame we had to have everyone out of there.

Sport0,

I don't see where this is an opinion unless I am to interpret this as meaning that you think Kansas should not have a schoolboy dual team. But I again agree with you if the Executive Board is going to Mandate camp attendance in order to compete in a regional national tournament then it should be free.