First I have to point out that there are two different people who have posted on this topic with similar names - husker fan (me) and huskerfan. I was reading huskerfan's post this morning and I thought did I write that. huskerfan, our names are too close. I'm going to have to start signing off. You even quoted me which is definitely OK. Many of the ideas you expressed I would have agreed with over the last couple of years when my son wrestled in the gym that you were in. We thought we were going to be in that same gym this year and we were not looking forward to another long day in that crowded and noisy gym. But like jrob1982 has stated for the stronger competition sometimes you are willing to put up with the extra time and other inconveniences.
The problem I would see with moving more matches to the other gym would be that you would have to lessen the wrestling experience for the older boys to make it effective in reducing the overall tournament time. You would have to run half and not full mats up there. That makes it kind of tough to wrestle for the older, bigger and faster wrestlers who would be going out of bounds too much.
Our mat in the old gym (which by the way was upstairs attached to the new gym I believe a little to the northeast of where you were) was way ahead of the other mats in that gym. As you can see from jayhawkmom (they finished at 6:15) not everyone finished as early as we did.
TIII, you asked for more feedback. My suggestion is that you consider some form of a split tournament format, maybe even a two day event if you want to keep the numbers that large. You might check with Scott Biddle of Winfield to get some insight on their experiences with the split tournament format which they have used for several years. Anything you do to lessen the congestion and time spent in that new gym, I believe would make for a better wrestling day for the majority of people involved.
Vincent Nowak
