jim21,

I understand your perspective. There is a lot of merit to your point. To be honest, the group that discussed the petition idea wrestled with the challenge of kids changing weights for the duals. Basically here is the dilemma we face....

1. One of the goals is to try and get more participation in the state freestyle/greco tournament. In a perfect world we wouldn't need a petition system and you could just pick the winners of the state tournament in each style to be the primary team members.

2. We don't live in a perfect world. Given the timing of the tournament a lot of the kids have a bunch of school activities during the spring....graduations, proms, etc. We debated and discussed what should be legitimate reasons for allowing one to petition. Some folks thought that prom should not be a legitimate reason to miss the state tournament. This is a very valid perspective in that live is about making hard choices. The problem is that a lot of us felt that we shouldn't put the kids in a position where they have to make that choice. Therefore prom is a legitimate reason to petition.

3. We also debated the changing weight classes. For me personally, this is a tough one. I tend to think that the kids should not be allowed to change weights. The problem with that line of thinking is that we would probably lose a lot of kids because they are just now getting healed up from a long high school season. They have also been cutting weight for the high school season and it is pretty quick to ask them to turn around and get back down for the state tournament.

Can all of these be done....yes. Are there some hardcore folks out there that will say well if they want it bad enough they should have to do it...yes. The problem is that a lot of the kids will make the decision not to compete. The goal of this policy is to try and get the best kids for the dual teams, to grow the participation in freestyle and greco state, and to have some objective criteria for choosing the teams. It isn't perfect but we can always modify it if better ideas are developed.

Shawn Budke