THE DEATH OF WRESTLING???...
As I finally am able to sit down and relax, I decided to turn on the laptop and write a little bit.
It's about 11:30 p.m. in the evening. I planned on updating the site this afternoon and early evening. That did not work out too well.
Are Sunday tournaments going to be the death of the Wrestling. Luckily my first year kids I hold out each year the first two tournaments of the year. I am not sure they would have appreciated getting home at 8:30 p.m. Especially when we had a 5-15 minute drive home for most of us.
It seems like simple math. In fact it even suggests guidelines in the IKWF manual how many wrestlers you should have per mat. I believe 40 is the magic number. That means if you are going to run 6 mats most of the day, you should have 240 kids not 450. I think the IKWF bylaws say this will have a tournament end at a reasonable time like 3:00 p.m.
Another key is to have enough ref's. I tried to have two extra refs, because many times you will find a ref will not show up. I have run 7 tournaments, only the Sectional Tournament, did I not have all the ref's show up. One tournament I had 3 ref's not show up. Granted most times it was because they had emergency's or injuries so I am simply saying plan for the unexpected.
Not sure why teams think they can beat the numbers. . .
What can be done to encourage teams to finish at a resonable hour?
Could all tournaments have to send to the state how many mats will be at a tournament?
Could coaches help submit realistic numbers? Parent's by committing to showing up to a tournament and then not showing up you are causing these tournaments to be overbooked? Why many times this is a team's only fundraiser.
I asked these questions to coaches. How many kids do you have on your team? Oh you have 40 kids. How many do you think you will bring? Then they say 35. Then I asked how many kids would you tell me you are going to bring if I made you prepay for these wrestlers? They would say 25. Then I would write down 20 kids for that team.
More times than not teams would be in the range of 17-20 not the 25 they committed to. Ooops they committed to 35 kids and brought 20. Now you multiply this by say 15 to 20 teams.
Even if every team is short 5 wrestlers that is 75 to 100 kids. This is where much of your profit is at... your last 75 to 100 kids bring in a lot of profit. There is no increase in the medals needed, no additional cost for the gym, no additional cost for the ref's, plus you get an extra 150 fans, an extra 75 lunch and snack purchases, and an extra 75 to100 entry fees. Teams understand this so they book 600 kids for a tournament they want 400 kids at. The problem is sometimes they book 600 and get 550.
Why not set up some type of incentive for teams to be realistic?
How about working with these clubs to run great tournaments?
How about if a club is wrestling after 4:00 p.m. you will be on probabition the following year, if you run later than 4:00 p.m. the following year then you can not a host a tournament the following year...
Something needs to be done to save our sport. How many times have you heard, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday practices okay - no problem. WHAT? Get up on my day off at 6:00 a.m. and sit in a gym all day? No thank you. My son/daughter will not be wrestling.
Even some of the old timers get a little cranky after 4:00 p.m...
