Yes six hours Vince, you start at 9:00 am and you are done by 3 or 4 pm it happens at the well run tournaments, we were done at Marysville this weekend at 3:45 and every mat except 1 had over 100 matches, it can be done, its simply a matter of limiting your entries to a reasonable amount, have enough mat space, and not spend all day calling for scratches.

I tend to have a different thought process when it comes to this sport than others who are just around as a hobby. I see wrestling as an exclusive sport where only the most dedicated people become successful, there are very few wrestlers who can half heartedly wrestle themselves into a state championship, it takes thousands of hours of practice, hundreds of matches, and several other factors. To me it doesn't bother me that we as a sport remain behind some other sports a lot of this has to do with the fact that our sport is not exciting to people who don't understand the level of dedication it takes. To me if a parent isn't willing to spend a whole day with their kids, then maybe they should look into another sport.

I have put into this sport already more than 90% of the people my age and indeed many who are many times older than me have. I've been at almost every aspect that our sport has to offer, from competitor, to coach, to official, and many things in between. As not once have I ever made getting home as early as possible a priority. Believe me as an official when you work your 80th match of the day chasing around the young ones on mat 1, I think you have a far better appreciation for what a long day is then simply being in the stands. And you might say "Well at least you are getting paid for it" Yeah that is true but the money doesn't make the exhaustion go away, it certainly doesn't soothe the legs cramps. By 6:00 in the evening you can bet your inheritance that I am ready to go home already, but I love the sport and I love officiating so much that im staying until the last match is over.

I guess I just don't have the patience to placte parents and people involved in the sport who on a saturday are only willing to give 4 hours out of their life. This issue eats at me just as badly as coaches/dads who week after week are uninformed as to what exactly the rules are. I had a coach this weekend who pulled his kid out of a tournament because he thought his kid had pinned the other kid and the ref on the mat who I have worked with several times and I wrestled with for some 7 years said he wasn't. When does all the bickering stop? It doesn't because no one will ever be truly happy with everything. But its how we deal with what life throws us that makes us who we are.

The moral of my extremly long post is this. If you aren't willing to spend a saturday with your kid(s) then you need to find a sport that doesn't require what this one does. More than that perhaps you should expand your mind and start watching all kids wrestle instead of just yours. One last thing here, my mother and father were exactly the way that some many people who post in this forum are. They hated having to spend a whole saturday at a tournament just to see me wrestle 3 times, and because of that I often had to travel with my coach Coach Robinson and then Coach Gable to the tournaments (by the way I am eternally grateful to both of my coaches for this). But honestly Mr Nowak or anyone else who fits the above description, why don't you tell me exactly what it is that is more important for you to be doing on a Saturday afternoon at home that you couldn't do any other day of the week especially Sunday?