A couple of weeks ago, I made a suggestion to Rick Bowden of the KSHSAA about a slight schedule change for the state wrestling tournaments and I wondered what others might think.
What if we were to move the first round of consolation matches from Friday night to immediately following the first round on Friday afternoon? That would be followed by the quarterfinals and semifinals, and would probably wrap-up just about the same time as usual — if not sooner.
There are two reasons for this idea:
1 — WEIGH-INS: A kid weighs in at 6:30 Friday morning, goes out and wrestles his first round match and loses at about 10 a.m. For the next 10 hours (or more) he sits around with not much to do, and more than likely starving. Then that kid wrestles his first consolation match Friday night and loses, and he's out — starved for the whole day for nothing.
By moving the first round of consolations to the afternoon, the kids that are going to out will be by 2 or 3 o'clock and won't have to starve themselves. In fact, we could even start weighing kids in for Friday after the quarterfinals if we wanted.
2 — MONEY: Say Team A is a 3-2-1A school from the southeastern corner of the state. Team A qualifies one kid to state with little or no chance to win a match. Let's also say that Team A is a struggling program that couild be dropped at anytime to save money. Under the current schedule, many teams (especially eastern teams in 3-2-1A) are pretty much locked into two nights of hotels and resturants at state. It would impractical to try and drive in Friday morning for weigh-ins and nearly as impractical to — if your kids are done Friday night — to drive home later. It's five hours from Hays for us in Leavenworth, so I know how that goes. A program that's just hanging on by a thread could benefit from having a more logical option of leaving Friday afternoon if they're done, thus saving $200-$300 in expenses.
Let me know what you think!
