To me a few things don't really make sense. I get the feeling that many parents are upset becuase they don't run the consolations until late in the day. This cuases them to have to stay late in the day and if their son/daughter loses then they are out. That late in the day usually means they have to go ahead and spend the night in the hotel, and thats where the problem is. Now I agree that it is not fun to have to wait all day just to loses but to get upset over a hotel room is somewhat disturbing. I think as a caring parent your attitude should not be "lets get out of here as soon as possible" Second and more important to me is in fact the pre-finals junk. In high school it is neat to see the wrestlers lined up and introduced, however at Wichita there are only 42 weight classes to introduce (14*3) But at Kids State there are 104 weight classes total. Last year it took 45 minutes to get through all of that and the poor kids at 16U 275lbs about fell over dead from having to stand up that whole time. I think it would be better to not do this before the finals. It would be okay to march them all out there and have someone say "Ladies and Gentlemen, Here are your 2003 State Finalist!" and then maybe a short speech about dedication, honor, and all that good stuff. Perhaps someone agrees with me?

I don't know if it is as much of "Let's get out of here as soon as possible" as it is for some brackets having 3 or 4 hours in between matches. Or even waiting 3-4 hours before they ever wrestle. It has been 1:00 before my son has wrestled at some tournaments, and that is what makes a long day. At districts he wrestled 7, 17, 27. He loved it.
I realize if you have an older kid wrestling also that you would be there all day too, but what about all the ones who don't have the older kid.....

I like the State Format the way it is. We've been in wrestling for a number of years now and look forward to seeing other kids from other clubs wrestle as well as being able to watch the younger ones and the older ones that we have gotten to know. The kids work hard all year to make it to the GRAND tournament and it should be just that "GRAND!" I think the kids have earned the spot light and name recognition.

To don't think there are many club who don't have older kids... I just think in general the tournament will be longer with a split then not... as to your son having to wait alot time before his first match... that will not happen at state... no matter if a split or not... plus I think at state with the high level of competition u need time to rest, relax, and reflect then move on to the next match... I teach my kids more than just wrestling but the frame of mind you should b in prior to a match and havein a match ever 10 don't afford this process to happen

PLUS IT'S THE STATE TOURNAMENT...
THIS IS TIME YOU SPEND WITH YOUR KIDS
I have been running my club for four years now and I don't have any kids of my own yet so I know as a parent you can find the time to spend with your kids especially since they have accomplished one of their primary goals; which is to make it to state.

WYANDOTTE COUNTY KIDS WRESTLING

I agree with you on this is the state tournament and it should be grand. I also agree that we should be spending time with our kids at this. they have worked hard all year to get to this and for many it is their last tournament of the year, so make it last.
Maybe we could get more regualar season tourament to use the split format through out the year.
Good luck to all at the State Tournament!

A split format would only enhance the time with your kids, it is the quality of the time spent. Let's face it, at the state level there is a lot of pressure, i have personally been involved with state tournaments in Kansas,California and Nebraska. The latter two use split formats, the kids are fresher, the parents happier and the day extremely shorter. Here's an idea, spend some of the day at the meet, perhaps do a team building activity or a trip to the zoo, swim in the motel pool, watch a movie, walk in the park,,,

LOL oops sorry for laughing at the thought... Maybe I’m just on the wrong topic? It just seems like everyone on this topic is trying there best to get away from the sport. “Let make it short and less painful”… “Forget about cheering on our teammates let go do something for ourselves!”… "Why wrestle longer than we have to."

And we wonder why kids are the way they are…????

THINK

Travius, you know that I support your efforts to grow the Wyandotte County Kids Wrestling Club in the Kansas City Kansas community but we do not agree on this subject.

I am convinced that these long tournaments hurt the popularity of wrestling. Are we trying to get our kids away from the sport as you stated? Hardly, I like most wrestling parents and their kids spend a great deal of time both during and after the season devoted to our kids wrestling. What we might be trying to get them away from is the countless hours of unproductive time that many experience at tournaments. Parents as a rule are not attracted to sports that take 10 to 12 hours or more for your typical weekend athletic event (ask your other coach how long his day was at Atchison this year).

You strongly stated your case how the excessive costs of wrestling was hurting your efforts to recruit kids to participate with their lower cost option of basketball available. Well money isn't the only valuable commodity that parents invest in wrestling. We also invest an extraordinary amount of time in comparison to other activities. For many parents the time factor is probably more important than the cost factor. I have never even spent close to the amount of time at any youth basketball event that my kids have participated in. The time difference between basketball and wrestling probably does keep many away from participating in wrestling.

You said all this time at tournaments is time spent with your kids. Well for myself personally I have to laugh at that. Most of my time at tournaments is spent with anyone but my kid and I do spend about a half hour with him around each of his matches. I am visiting with other parents from my club or other clubs or just walking around inside or outside the facility. My son has never just sat there by me at a meet for several hours and watched other kids wrestle and talk about that with me. He spends some of it with his teammates normally outside of the gym area, but he has probably spent the majority of that time playing on the Gameboy. He has spent way more time doing that than I care for. He will be doing a lot more of that again this weekend. I would rather that he would be spending more time involved in some of the type of activities that illegalhold was describing after or before his SHORT? six hour day of wrestling at a Split State Session.

You are not going to have a match every 10 at a Split State session. We didn't have that exactly at District either. Olathewrestlingmom's son did because I believe he had a smaller bracket but my son only had one 10 match break. He was at 13, 23 and 48. I believe a split at State would have bigger match spreads due to the 16 vs. 8 kid brackets of District. You would probably get 3-4 matches in a 6 hour period at a State split session. So that is a 1.5 to 2 hour average wait between matches. I think that is ample time to recover and prepare for your next match. Watch how long it takes for the first round loser to get to their second match this Saturday. I bet it will be at least twice that long. I know my son really hates waiting that long to wrestle again. I think like Olathewrestlingmom said most kids prefer the shorter waits between matches.

To me the bottom line is if we want to make wrestling more popular we need to have all of our tournament days shortened. There are reasons that wrestling is not as popular as football, basketball or baseball with the general public. The wrestling community needs to think of what some of those reasons are and try to change them. I'm not saying that this is the sole reason but it is one of them.

Travius,
I think u miss the point. U as I, love the sport totally and can think of nothing more appealing than watching wrestling all day. As a coach you are involved in each and every match so the time flies and the day is filled with great adrenaline and excitement. But, Lets face reality, we lose kids because of the time committment that is involved on the parental level. We also burn out young kids who spent long days and long hours waiting between matches. Think about the kids you are working with and for--and realize the tremendous things that can happen from being able to remain involved in the sport just that much longer--we appreciate all the hard work u do and time you put in. Just be a bit more open minded is all,,

My son just won his first State Championship so it is kind of difficult to say anything negative. But here goes. Twelve and unders absolutely need to be on a full mat. All of the 12 & unders deserve that. I was sitting there watching Hensley and Garrett in the 12 & under 130 semi finals and I just thought what a shame that the match is not on a full mat. The same thing with the finals. When you have wrestlers the size and skill of Hensley, Isenberg, Tischhauser and Walter, they should have a full mat. Even the lighter weights in 12 & under need the full mat. These kids are 6th and 7th graders and they are moving fast and hard. They are going out of bounds too much and important match action is lost to kids going out of bounds. This is the State tournament for these kids who worked so hard to get there and I think we need to provide bigger mats for more age groups.

Coach Travius I have to point out also that your statement to Olathewrestlingmom about not having to wait 3-4 hours for your first match at State is incorrect. I don't think most mats ended the first match until about match 45 to 50. These first matches probably ran a little faster than the 10 match per hour rate that Mr. Salyer reported earlier due to more pins happening in the first round. But I know quite a few wrestlers had to wait 3-4 hours for their first match Saturday.

Richard:

My family stayed until the last match on Saturday, because it involved a teammate of my son who was wrestling to get into the final. It seems like it was a little later than seven when his match ended but that is approximately correct.

I just think we maybe need to explore what illegalhold is stating that they do in California and Nebraska. Illegalhold says those states successfully implement a split State format. If we can get bigger mats and shorter waits between matches on that first day, I think it would really be worth investigating.

My son did not wrestle his first match on Saturday until 3:00! He did have a first round bye, but still!!!
We did not get out of there on Saturday until 6:00 then yesterday until 5:30 or so.
I agree with Vince, since he won the championship it is a little hard to say negative remarks, but after the "empty" hours we spent there I don't see how changing to a split format would not benefit most people.

First of all,,i take my hat off to the great wrestling and the totally committed people that did an awesome job with the state tournament. My son has been wrestling out of state (nebraska 3 yrs and california 1 yrs) since his last time here in the great state of Kansas. The overall committment to kids and the wrestling to kansas is second to NONE. He has been a 2 time state champ in Nebraska and a runner-up in California, but he and I really feel his greatest wrestling accomplishment has been medaling here in Kansas this year. The kids are really just that much better here. That says a lot about the kids and coaching here.

It is time though to seriously consider several things to enhance the tournament. A split format is seriously needed. We were there at 7:45 on Saturday, did not wrestle until about 2:00, then about 5:00 and it was roughly the same on Sunday. We live nearby, it was not a travel issue, but my other kids and wife were pretty miserable with the long waits.

It is time to give it a shot for a year, see how it goes, adjust and go from there. It can work, believe me. I was not a believer until i had the experience for myself.

Some other things needed. A warm up area for wrestlers, a couple of extra mats in the exhibition hall for wrestlers only to warm up, stretch out, get out of the killer seats of the expocenter. Those of you that went to the NCAA's saw what i am talking about. The floor during the finals was way too packed as well, perhaps bull pen up the finalists in a warm up area, keep the extra people from coming down on the floor.

Also if there is no way for coolers to be brought in to a "family" area in the exhibition hall, then there needs to be some sort of other choices for available food.

Consider doing the announcing similar to the NCAA tournament, it really adds a lot as those who have been there will add.

These are just suggestions, i really appreciate all the super-hard work that was done, as a total wrestling lover, coach, parent, i just want to offer things from my experience that could help others and Kansas to be just that much better.

Richard,

First of all thank you for your congratulations on Jacob's achievement this weekend. I do appreciate that.

My involvement in Kansas Kids Wrestling in my son's six years has been just as a parent. I do believe I have been a pretty involved parent year around with Jacob in his participation. I have also been pretty active the last couple years on this forum.

I am really not aware of a general integrity problem in our District 1. I am assuming you are referring to the 9 person bracket that so many have been posting about. From what I read that happened in our North Sub-District. If someone was allowed to participate with a late weigh-in then a mistake was made. I just do not know enough about it to honestly comment on it.

I do know that the No.1 wrestler from the North Sub-District in my son's 12 & under, 120 pound bracket did not make weight at Districts. His father came up to us before the Ottawa District meet to wish Jacob good luck and told us that his son weighed in at 120.6 pounds so he missed it by less than a pound. Jacob had defeated him twice in their only two matches this year but both were close matches. If he had been allowed to compete, Jacob may have not won Districts and ultimately State, so the weigh-in process can definitely be crucial to the end result and needs to be fair.

I received an email someone suggesting that we try to start an unofficial committee to look further into this topic. My thought would be to get at least one or two people interested in this possible proposal from each district that can somehow converse about this topic.

Anyone interested in this feel free to email me or send me a private message.

Jeremy

illegal hold
would you be interested in helping out with what I am calling an unofficial committee. You seem to have knowledge of the split format from the past and I was wondering if you would be interested in helping out.
Jeremy