Tulsa Nationals is one of the biggest and most highly represented Nationals in the USA. I would hazard a guess that many of the 1st place finishers this last weekend would have been sitting in the bleachers after their second match there.

Get a grip, people don't fly or drive from CA, GA, NY, OR with kids who are wimps to go to these things. They are generally the best of the best or as good as it gets.

I'm not knocking Kansas Kids. I think we have good programs, wrestlers and supportive parents. The problem is we need to step outside the rectangle that is KS and open our eyes to the possibility of wrestling against people who challenge us not wrestle the same set for 7 months. How dreary is that. Weekend after weekend wrestling the same people over and over. Mind numbing and not very constructive. There are like 8 national tournaments within a easy days drive from just about anywhere in KS. Pick one and test your mettle, see what others do and learn to adapt. Hey if you lose out so what, your a lot better off with the experience than if you'd stayed at home and played it safe beating the same kids over and over.

All to often, I hear of the stage fright thing esp with the younger kids. They wrestled little tournaments all year did really well, get to district or state and bomb out. Why, most kids never had to stay overnight anywhere for tournament let alone wrestle two days in a row. Add to it the huge crowd,loud environment and a full bracket with lots of possibilities. They get overwhelmed and stressed out early. You go to big tournaments like USJOC, Big Horn Nationals or Tulsa Nationals your gonna get that experience and learn to deal with it well before state time.

That is the only reason I support having the 6U wrestle up at State, at least they get that type of experience out of the way when they are young so that when they are 8U they don't freak out when it counts. Other than that I really don't support it because it's a money thing and these kids with some exceptions are generally filler and fodder for the 8U group.

I know that if I had money and time we would wrestle every National Tournament possible just so we could get that kind of experience and exposure. Once you do a few of them you see how much they really improve your wrestler and their outlook on the sport.

There are several National Tourney Series or equivalents already. Anything we would do would pale to those. It might be nice to have a series situation like OK does, trying to get kids to at least wrestle in different parts of the state throughout the season would be a good start.

Greco and Freestyle are important and should be supported especially if your wrestler thinks they want to go to next level. The problem I see with that is there just aren't enough kids doing it to make it feel ligit. Aside from wrestling up a couple of age groups, my son prob would never have any competition in this state in his own age group. That means more travel more money and very little support from a club. Not a good formula for success, which is sad because of the experience that could be gained would be invaluable. If the Folkstyle season was about half as long or Greco/Freestyle ran concurrent with Folkstyle you might see an upswing in these other programs. But with baseball, swimming and other outdoor sports in the spring, your looking at a lot of conflicts and that is why those programs are on the short end of the stick. Kids want to be outside and they want to enjoy the weather. I agree these programs should be supported but not with a Triple Crown emphasis. It would be a hard sell to tell people these are the best kids out there when most are just who's available or left. Still a hardcore group and I salute them for their tenacity.