1-Definitely reduce the floor passes to carded coaches only. The gate by mats 1-3 allowed me to walk thru til mid afternoon. When I got my coaching pass wristband from our packet, I put it in my wallet, as I was going thru bag check, handing out other coaches bands, etc., and until one of the security guys at the head table end caught me and of course it triggered the "oops, forgot to put it on" bell, I probably would have gone the whole day without putting it on. But too many non-coaches on the floor. Putting chairs inside the rail sounds good, but that might bring more people to the floor for a nice chair close to the action!
2-Someone at the tourney mentioned running the novice division on Friday night to lighten the Saturday load. Getting rid of the novice division wouldn't hurt my feelings, but our novice kids liked wrestling in that venue.
3-I don't know how much it would affect numbers, but if we want this to turn into a national level tourney, the satellite weigh ins should probably be tossed, and make everyone weigh in shoulder to shoulder at the event. I believe there were around 30+ satellite sites, and we were one of them. Is it convenient? Yes. Is it going to kill the tourney if you do onsite weigh ins? I don't think so. Salina Tourney of Champions does it, USJOC does it, Tulsa events do it, Iowa Folkstyle Nats does it, Liberty does it. There are lots of whispers about what teams actually made their kids make weight (you mentioned this in the email that went out to clubs about some kids entering this tourney several weight classes different than what they had wrestled at a national event earlier in the year), and if you want to get rid of any suspicion, do an onsite weigh in. The competition is obviously getting to a point where it is comparable to a USJOC type of event. Most out of towners are either going to come to town the night before and stay the night, or if they drove up Sat morning, they will stay Sat night before driving home. So a Friday night weigh in, and wrestling all day Saturday, probably wouldn't hurt numbers. If anyone is complaining about the late finish time, they need to remember that this was a one day tourney, and to run that many kids through, and still finish in one day, is still way better than what USJOC does, which is start wrestling at 11AM or so the first day, get everyone out by around 6 that night, then wrestle from 8-2PM or so on 2nd day, have everyone wait around till 7:00 to start wrestling the finals.
