I also have noticed a huge upswing on parents/wrestlers within the club that don't want to travel very far. Local tournaments are great and most local tournaments are not a far drive for most clubs within a district. I don't know where to put my finger on for this lack of enthusiasm from parents to even go to local tournaments. We have never told parents that to be in the club you MUST go to the tournaments the club is going to, nor have we forced parents to make their kids wrestle in any tournaments at all. At the start of the year with our parent meeting we handed out calendars with a tentative schedule of all the tournaments that the club was planning to go to throughout the year, yet with over 100 carded wrestlers (open, novice, and scholastic athletes) I believe we have about a 50% participation in local tournaments. This may seem like a large number but when you really stop to think about it with our club it seems more like a large number not wanting to go anywhere or do anything on the weekend. This number drops significantly when talking about large National tournaments such as USJO and Tulsa Nationals. I know that some people may say it is getting cost prohibitive to travel all of the time, but I say that is a bunch of mularkey. Fuel costs will still be the same if you drive 300 miles all over town as opposed to 150 miles to and 150 miles from a tournament.
Back to my point, I had several wrestlers whose first tournament was our own tournament. That is what a month into wrestling and getting their first taste of a tournament? Also, a lot of new parents don't like to go to a tournament on Sundays and I appreciate clubs that do both an open and a novice or an Open with D bracketing tournament on Saturdays. This is a part of the wrestling culture that clubs need to start to try to change.
There are also issues of same district clubs hosting tournaments on the same weekend. This needs to be worked out within the district with the district leadership. In a larger district such as D4 this would not be as much of a problem if 2 tournaments had the same date if one was North and one was South, but in D2 the clubs are forced to choose a few times which clubs tournament to go to on a certain date due to having both tournaments scheduled on the same date and the hosts are only 15 miles from each other.
Mike, I too was dissappointed this summer seeing several tournaments being canceled during Freestyle/Greco season and Cindy and myself got together to work out a tournament hosted at Derby for a good chance for the kids to have the opportunity to wrestle before the State tournament. It's for the kids, and i think everyody needs to understand that.
Another issue that has been brought out with this issue is the fact that gym space is getting limited by the school districts. I called our school district at the first of the year to get my dates for our tournaments that we planned on having and was able to get the dates I wanted luckily. Had we bid on getting Sub's or Districts hosted, I don't believe we could have had the venue for those weekends. This issue with traveling still gets my goat since i sent out invitations to our tournament to several Oklahoma clubs and they travelled up to come to our tournament.
I also have to say that I think that the planned District 2 Duals is also a great opportunity for the kids and parents alike to become more involved with the sport, club, and community.
Okay i have rambled long enough.
Craig Gash
Derby Wrestling Club
Tournament Director
Last edited by Crash99; 01/07/07 04:06 PM.
