I think that people that post negitive things about Kansas home club tournaments are not understanding some things.

1.The people running the tournaments are VOLUNTEERS.

2.They are not personally profiting from the tournament. The money goes to buy things for the wrestling club. mats- singlets- usa cards-whatever the Volunteers decide.

3.I will assume they have other jobs that they go to to support their familys.

4.They are volunteering to help kids & kansas wrestling. I have never been around any tournament volunteer that had any other motive in my opinion.

5.Most tournaments dont invite refs back that do a poor job. You cant always get the refs you want for a tournament. You get as many of the known good ones as you can & the rest is luck of the draw.

6.When mistakes or errors happen the tournament volunteers try to take the actions to correct & improve the following year.

7.tournament volunteers dont owe you a perfect experence at their tournaments. (but they try any way) Actually they dont owe you any thing.

If you have constructive criticism thats fine air it out. But if you want to whine & cry about volunteers working for you, I suggest keeping to yourself or confront the tournament director via Private Message or face to face. Why get on here & try to bash kids wrestling clubs? It just hurts the sport we all love.

8. Or they could just know a better way of doing it.

I agree with you on most of your points, but with that said.
1. The adult volunteers are there to help the high school kids are forced to be there because thats how some of their program is funded.
2. Yes they do owe us something, we pay for the kids to wrestle, we don't pay for tableworkers to be texting, messing with their phones ect.
3. Bad tournaments give the sport we all love a bad rep. Being in a gym from 8-5, or being stuffed in someplace like sardines doesn't exactly send a message to new parents to keep their kids out for the sport.
4. Not every tournament is perfect, there are mistakes at every tournament. People don't want to go to a poorly run tournament by choice. More often then not, it will happen the following year.
5. Tournaments keep getting more expensive, and the awards keep getting cheaper. We have been to multiple tournaments where brackets aren't even given out to the champions, or the medal doesn't have the ribbon to go around the kids neck. For the older kids that have been around a while it isn't as big of a deal, but for the little kids, thats a big deal.

So to sum it all up, poorly run tournaments, all day in a gym and bad awards is going to kill the sport. Why do you think entries and numbers are down? Bad economy, maybe a little, keeping new kids to the sport out, a lot!

Man I can't wait for your tournament Sportsfan02. What was the date of the "EVERTHING IS ROSES AND DAISYS NATIONALS" to be held in the largest building known to man were everyone sits on fine padded couches and the drink cart girls are at your sit in case you need something. And the refs see everything the way we want.

As the old saying goes "Those who can't do... TEACH"
The new saying is "Those who don't do... complain on the internet about people who do what they can with what they have.

you missed the last point completely- if you have a problem address it at the tournament,or send a PM, if it's constructive criticism, or suggestions for improvement let it be heard. keep the negatives to yourself.

you have complained about these things in the last week- building size, medal size,meal appearance, seating, concessions, refs, table workers, brackets, long days,costs and so on.

yet the only thing you have offered as constructive criticism is to host better tournaments to keep kids involved. first of all i'm not sure how far down the numbers are. we have two clubs 60 kids each, with less than 30,000 population, GE novice had 600 kids!!, EK close to 500 sat. and sun. each. i think the biggest contributing factor is clubs, in close proxcimity, hosting tournament on the same day. hutch/ haysville, pittsburg/ independence, linn county/ olathe south, just to name a few.

the first tournament i ever went to 25 years ago we were there until 10 o'clock at night!! my dad said this is ridiculous we aren't doing this. many people came to us and said, most tournaments are good, don't quit because of one bad experience. we didn't, you couldn't have forced my brother or i to quit we loved it.

if we would of heard from someone like you, after that tournament my dad might have very well told YOU'RE DONE. i usually find 1 or 2 bad tournaments a year, so what, the next year most of them have learned and improved.

wrestling tournament are crowded, NEVER been to one that wasn't, i know in missouri when you and your parents did it things were great, too bad i never went there, i don't know what i'm missing. i have never judged a tournament on medals, and will teach my son to be the same. i JOKE about hospitality rooms being good, but would NEVER COMPLAIN ABOUT FREE FOOD!.

lastly i would like to know what tournament you run now, i would like to attend, and take notes.

hotrodder i don't think sportsfan was complaining, he just forgot to add a constructive comment.

Sorry, you missed it.

Noooo, I want to hear the complaints on tournaments. It helps me decide on which ones to attend or not. Think of it like restaurant reviews and such. If tournaments don't want negative things said, then they will clean up their act.

I did not attend that particular tournament so I have nothing to complain about. But I like the info as I said just the same.

I am with Sportsfan02 on this one.I pick where I take me son on a lot of things.How things are run is one of the bigest.I went to Effingham than sunday.It went very good.The people ran it well.
It is just like every thing in the world.Small is more face to face.If you go big you better have people in charge.And the people in charge better know what they are doing.Years and years of mistakes make thing go smooth.

Missed what? A nameless person running a nameless tournament in a nameless wrestling club in a nameless town. Do the people that wrestle in this tournament have names? How do you bracket? How does a competitor know when he is up? If people knew who where & when this no name perfect showdown mystery tournament was maybe we could come & give you some constructive criticism.

You missed the tournament for this year.

sorry, my boys were wrestling in the living room & broke my crystal ball.

i can't wait to attend these WONDERFUL places that have great tournaments, i really need to take notes. then when i have my tournament it will be great, i mean who the heck is jack roller anyway. cc's dad and sportsfan run the top tourneys in the world. they are held in a secret town in missouri, and mid-south-east kansas, they are called Fantastic Awesome Never-wrong Truly Amazing Super-duper Youth Wrestling Tournaments- or F.A.N.T.A.S.Y WRESTLING TOURNAMENTS FOR SHORT. keep up the negativity guys, because we all know that you guys have it all figured out.

LOL- if i put that at the end of my post it means is ok to be a jerk. right?

oh and by the way i used to put my name on my posts, but it's funner to follow guys like sportsfan around and play games as HEADUP. sporto is good, at playing games.

i think you guys need a group hug. maybe a little bonding time would not hurt.lol

how the hell are you nix. havent seen you in a while. all i can say to the rest of you is i was just saying alot of this stuff a few weeks ago. 25 years ago. are you really that old lol.

Keep it up HEADUP

You keep after these guys. Someday maybe the will try to start helping the sport instead of pulling it down.
I mean look at ol Highcrotch...
You even paid him a compliment the other day. Still no name but its about taking baby steps.
LOL

good bocman hows it going. well tonite i have jeffrey in a trash bag no food or water and just gave him 4 laxatives. i think he will make weight. saturday. or no food and water for a week.other than that everything is great.

heck i even agree with sportsfan sometimes, she just lacks, um what the word, oh yeah TACT. you gotta give respect to get respect.

how are you talking about being OLD, BOCKOVER? you're older than i am. we may have graduated, but we all know that you chanute boys didn't start kindergarten until age 7.