1. The holiday had to have an effect on the numbers.
2. I was looking forward to watching kids wrestler from out of state instead of the same kids from the district we can wrestle with all year long, but only about 11 wrestlers from out of state.
3. The tourn. has probably moved so the promoters don't lose money.($8,000 on awards)
COST
$8000 medals
$6000 arena
$10,000 misc. ??
=$24000 cost to have tourn??
At 800 entries
$25,000 kids entries
$20,000 parents admissions 1600x$12
$10,000 from City of Park City
$ ??? parking and coaches bands
316 Productions makes over $25,000. ???
I was excited about going until I found out about the parking fees, admission fees, and extra coaches band fees that were not posted on the tournament flyer but rather obscurley on their website. Just didn't seem right.
This is not bashing, I just want to post my concerns and maybe someone has information to contradict this...great please inform us.
Anyone who has run a tournament knows that it is an expensive adventure to run an event of any size. I have been a Tournament Director for the last several years and have come to find that just the startup cost of running our tournament runs about $12000. So if you are trying to bash the profits that come from a tournament such as this I can only say that the profits that are made go back into the tournament to make it bigger and better for the next year/tournament. As a startup tournament, yes, there are sponsors who help to pay for some of the startup cost. These sponsors expect a return on their money and with the low numbers this would not have been good for the sponsors. For instance, other national tournaments have been running for a while now, they also have sponsors, some own their own mats and scoreboards...Do the math, say 12 full mats and scoreboards at approx. $8000/mat and $1000/scoreboard, that's a lot of money. This is the level that 316 Productions aspires to be. As with most tournaments, there has to be a starting point.
The original date, unfortunately, had some major issues which affected numbers. This is the reason for pushing the date back into January. In looking at the available dates that Hartman Arena had available to use for the event, the only date in January open was Jan. 16th and 17th. The next available dates would push the tournament into February and a couple of the dates that were available were also going to have conflicts. There are many concerns regarding not only the original date, but also the new date. First with the original date, it was found that because of the length of the season, a LOT of Kansas clubs don't start practices until after Thanksgiving, so the support from our own hometown clubs was not there like it could be. Secondly with the new date, a lot of Jr. High kids will be unavailable to wrestle unless they stay in club and not wrestle for their school. (My own son plans to wrestle for his school and will not be wrestling in this tournament as well now).
In summary, with my experience I have found that you can't please some people all of the time, nor can you please all people some of the time, so we do our best and it is what it is.
Several of the concerns that have been posted are being addressed and I know the promoters desire for this event to be one that would make Kansas proud!
