My son had a very questionable call at state last year. That call was the difference between placing and not placing. I don't know what my instant reaction was, but my reaction right after the match was explaining to my son that we don't blame a loss on a ref. If the match was that close that a call affected the outcome...he should have done something different so the match wasn't that close. My worst fear is my 7 year old thinking he lost a match because of a call. That creates a monster when they are 16 or 18 years old.
My son had a few of these along the way in Kids' Federation and has had a few in high school as well. You make a great point about talking to your wrestler about an outcome seemingly being decided by a bad, often judgement call. They shouldn't dwell on it, they should learn from it. Once they get into high school, they will have plenty of close matches that can go either way and they just have to be happy with the those matches they win and learn from the matches they lose.
