Crash99,
You make some good points. I definitely agree with you that it is very important to ease the parents and kids into the sport in the first two years. But I do think it is still important even after that. My son started wrestling open tournaments after his first 1.5 years of competition in his second year. He started wrestling most of his split tournaments in his last four years of competition. Actually for him I think as he got older, his tolerance for spending all day in a gym to wrestle 3 to 4 matches diminished. Those times that he would comment favorably about how much he liked wrestling in split tournaments occurred in his last two years (when he was a 7th and 8th grader). He was entering his teenage years and was probably wanting to spend some more time with his other teenage friends and less time around all the younger kids in the gym. He truly loved not having to wait so long between matches. He said he really liked it when he could just get a shorter amount of rest and get right back into wrestling a match. I think it takes them out of their competitive rhythm when they have to wait too long between matches. Actually I think there are more open tournaments than split tournaments in Kansas, especially in District 2. The only one I know of in our District 1 besides the District tournament itself is Mill Valley.
