We can waste valuable time considering the solutions for lots of issues that really shouldn't be a priority. I have been waiting for someone to post the participation number for each age group for this past Saturday's FS/GR State Championships. I counted the Schoolboy Greco entrants and there were 32. The total number of participants might have been 250. Fellow wrestling enthusiasts, this is a SERIOUS and ALARMING problem. A large number of great Cadet and Junior wrestlers were missing. We have over 8,000 USA Card Carrying Members and less than 5% made it to the state tournament! This should be our number one priority. We can haggle over parental control, sportsmanship, and who should and shouldn't do this or that but lets not waste our time on that when we should be promoting summer wrestling and setting goals for ourselves. We should start by trying to get at least 100 to show up for Southern Plains this year and 200 next year. Then focus on 400 for next year's FS/GR State tournament. I am not sure why we don't have more but I know that Satellite clubs would be a good start. In the summer you have to combine clubs to get good practice numbers. Can we start posting some challenges and solutions to make summer wrestling promotion a priority for this organization. I know the rules and subjectivity of the officiating is very difficult to pick up on. Maybe that is holding some parents back? Dean Watson had a great idea when he stated that we needed more officials. I think he should be the first one to step up and buy a blue shirt.
I agree and maybe if we had officials that would work at our practices we could actually figure out what a push out really is and how to score from the FS clinch, etc.
Looking for feedback and ideas...
