I think the expocentre was a great place to have districts,but the club or clubs that were in charge have some things to change before next year. I'll start with a couple. Free parking and a hospitality room for the table workers and coachs. I dont know if the the rest of the tables were starved out like ours was but that was just wrong. At 10:00 a.m. the makeshift hospitality room was nothing but crumbs. But there was an expocentre security personel gaurding the empty bowls.

that's funny, guess you would be the wrong one to ask if they had great food. don't bet on that one packer or maybe you should they might of had great food but deeohh could not tell us it sounds like. sorry you had to starve today.

http://www.ninetynineballoons.com. guys watch this video let me kow that you think than send it on to all friends family made this growm man cry just o let you know how precious life is...

When you volunteer the key word is volunteer.Why would you think meals and parking is free.Its about the kids so stop complaining, if you dont like it nobody is forcing you or your kid to wrestle find a sport less expensive.

99.99 percent of the time all volunteer's food are free and the parking, would not seem right to volunteer your whole day, and not get feed.

the ref's get paid to be there and there food is free. but free help should not.

sounds like to me anytime someones says somthing cja calls it complaing.

love to see that trend started, tell all volunteers, they need to pay for there meals, and parking in advance and lets see how many volunteers are left.

i am sure every club is greatful of the volunteers and will take care of them, i am sure topeka was not on purpose, because on friday every one was taken care of. but our parking on friday was free wonder why your districts was not.

If I knew I was getting fed and free everything I would volunteer all the time.The point is KNOW what you volunteer for before you obligate yourself and if you dont like it dont do it.

well if i was you you better volunteer at every tournament, because every one feeds there volunteers at tournaments. so since you know it's free food for volunteering at tournaments. i guess you know where you will be every weekend next wrestling season. volunteering for free food.

keep that calender free, i know of some others that are not wrestling that feeds there volunteers. if you will volunteer to paint my fence i will feed you also. lol keeps getting better and better as the nite rolls on.

CJA, I volunteer for kids events all the time. No problem. The problem is, the things we volunteered for and what we got, were way off. This was a State qualifing tournament, a very fast paced tournament and you need to get the best help you can. So next year maybe we can change a few things so we can keep good help reffing and tableworking. Our table would much rather have paid the $3.00 to get in and watched from the stands. But instead we volunteered for the kids sake, and for the love of the sport.

I agree that the Expo is a money pit. A few of us parents were talking and we all agreed that if they would make the prices more reasonable they would sell more, especially given the fact you can not bring food in. We bought one thing, a drink, for $3.50.We will be packing a cooler and taking breaks to the car next week.
Besides the price of food and drinks the expo is a great place to hold wrestling. We were done by 2pm and on our way home.

Didnt know it had to be a rich mans sport. So if a kid wants to wrestle and cant afford it because of these prices they just shouldnt wrestle?? I thought we were wanting to get more kids in wrestling not less. Glad you have so much money$$$!

Alot of you said it then since the refs get paid to be there maybe they shouldn't be eating in the coaches hospitality room and the coaches might get something we are voluntaring our time they are not.

I never heard of a club turning down a kid because he/she did'nt have registration fees.I also never heard of a kid paying for anything I pay for my kids sports not him.Our club would easily help a kid out somehow if he wanted to wrestle with donations or money.As for the Expo money pit,did they check your car for coolers too,why not park outside the parking lot if $3 was gonna hurt so much.

Did you not enjoy the venue? Did your kid not think it was awesome wrestling on one of the 14 mats? Were the seat backs not more comfortable then high school bleachers? Did you not enjoy the extra room? Was it not great that all of the wrestlers wrestled in one room and not some in one gym and some down the hall and some across the street? Do you volunteer so you can get free food?

The fact that my kid was able to wrestle in that venue was worth way more the $3.00. To be able to move around the mat surfaces and get around was worth $3.00. The fact that all of the wrestling took place in one room, worth more then $3.00. Food? Didn't even look for food. I was too busy coaching wrestlers.

I wasn't talking about the kid paying, I think you know what I meant. But you did say find a sport you can afford, thats what I was refering to.

This will be my last post defending the venue for D1 or how the tourney was ran. I’ll try not to repeat what I wrote on the “$3 parking” thread, but I do want to address some of your concerns. Deeohh, I appoligize that your table was left out on the hospitality. If you refer back to my other post on the “$3 parking” thread you’ll see that we did put a lot of food out. We had planned on your table runner(s) taking care of getting you food from the hospitality room, or at least giving people breaks to use the bathroom or visit the hospitality room. We gave out 5 floor passes per table and it only took 3 to run the table. It must have been poor communication on my part. I do know that many table workers took advantage of the hospitality room….some actually cheated the process by taking their pass off and giving it to their kids to get fed; which was not the intended purpose.

I do think that $2.50 for a bottle of water was too high. However, water cleared the bag checks…so you could have brought it in. The Expocentre, much like other big venues, contracts out the concessions. In Topeka that company is Heart of America. When you have a contract for concessions as a business plan it makes since for you to protect your exclusive rights in your contract…that is why the Expocentre has the bag checks; they are required to do it in order to be in compliance with their contract with Heart of America. The new venue under construction in Wichita will have the same parent company as the Expocentre in Topeka, so I would not look for it to be any different.

I will close by saying that YES you paid $3 to park and YES you may have purchased water at $2.50 a bottle. But, I think most of you were sitting down to dinner in your own house on Saturday night. Dinner on the town was optional and not mandatory…we were done wrestling at 2:30pm not 8:00 or 9:00 at night. I personally think that was a good trade, you can make up your own mind. My point is that I hope you take everything into consideration as you make your decisions as to the quality of the venue or the effectiveness of the management team involved.

I am planning to start a thread to thank our key supporters in this weekend events. But for now this will be my last post in defense of what we accomplished or how it was managed. Deeohh your help was appreciated...I hope you vollunteer next year, thank-you. We are listening and hope to make next years event(s) even better. Good luck at State!

Mark Stanley
jrvikingwrestling@yahoo.com

Mark, if it is not proprietary information I would be interested in hearing the financials for this tournament. Was this hosted by D-1 as a group or by your club? If there were any profits who do those go to or what are they used for? What were your entry fees and did they cover the facility rental? Anything you can give us would be appreciated.

The Expocentre is a money pit. Hate it. But, Mark Stanley and help ran an excellent tournament. With Trackwrestling. And the refs that I saw (I was mainly on mats 7 and 8, but saw other matches on other mats) earned what free food they got. It would be nice if there was somewhere else in D1 we could do districts and be out by 3pm or so, but ......... Hated to pay for parking, but overall Mark - GOOD JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And, good refs!!!!!!! Just hope the weather stays good so we can continue to go to our car to eat and drink. I am not spending any money in there if I do not have too. If their staff just knew the people who run the place in Salina treat people better and still do good business.

i dont mind paying high prices IF THE KIDS WOULD GET SOME OF THE MONEY AND NOT THE EXPO CENTER!!!

Ok. I hardly ever make comments to these posts but here is my reply. Jackson County wrestling club was also 1 of the hosts of District 1. Let me give you a little backround. I have been involved with our club for the last 13 years. Of those years, I have helped organize 10 years worth of Sub-Districts at our facility. This year was no exception. It was my first year with being involved with Districts as a host and what an eye opener!!

First off-every effort was made to make sure a hospitality room was provided to the coaches and table workers (I don't mess with this at Subs don't have the time and obviously it's not worth all the complaining). I made sure that arrangements were made to get drinks to the tables and I know for a fact that it happened. It was also stated at the table workers meeting that every club was responsible for relieving their workers for lunch break. I know this for a fact because I organized this meeting. We can not be responsible for those parents that gave their passes to their wrestlers to get food out of that room. If you were one of these parents, shame on you!!

Secondly-Did I know about the $3 parking fee? Absolutely not! I paid it and didn't even bat an eye about it. That was a small price to pay to watch kids wrestle their hearts out.

Thirdly-I love to volunteer and have for the past 13 years for wrestling or anything for that matter. Do I expect anything in return when I say yes I'll help you out? NO!! Do I think it's great to get in free and possibly get a free meal? You betcha!! But..hey...if the food is gone and I'm hungry, I get something at the concession stand and don't think twice about it. I figure getting in free and having the best seat in the house is well worth the sacrifice of no lunch especially since you got out of there by 2:30.

But..hey...let's just say that when you run a tourament you don't get much of a chance for breaks. You're pretty much on your feet from 5:30am to 5:00pm (that's what time I got out of there on Saturday and for that matter the Saturday before that)and you're really lucky if you get anything to eat or drink because your way to busy trying to make sure things are running smoothly so everyone can get out of there by 3:00 and yes Subs was done by 3:00 also! Not to mention the long nights several weeks in advance that you are planning for the tournament. AGAIN..a big sacrafice to volunteering but well worth it for the kids.

And..Finally..life is way to short to complain about not getting food for lunch or paying a $3 parking fee. And...yes...I know this too well. My husband is battling his third round with cancer since April 2007. We will be making a trip to Mayo next week to see what type of treatment he can get to help battle this terrible disease since it's resistant to the chemo that he has already had. And...yes...he is a coach for our club and guess what...he was coaching on Saturday! Do you think he cared that water was $2.50 or had to pay $3 for parking? NO...he was there for the kids and enjoyed every minute of it. Is money tight? You bet! We have two kids left in wrestling and with the events of the last year we had to cut back some.

We have always helped the kids that couldn't afford to wrestle and it was difficult not being able to do that this year. So...I help by volunteering my time and not complaining about it even with everything going on in our lives! And...yes...I'll be volunteering my time at State this weekend and so will my husband and for that matter our 10 year old son took it upon himself to ask Tuff if he could volunteer at a table this weekend. What a very valuable lesson for a 10 year old to learn!! You can bet that I'll be very happy volunteering this weekend just for the front row seat that I'll have to watch our 14 year old wrestle and the joy of seeing my husband coach him!!!!

That is what volunteering is all about!!

Why does everyone want so badly to be done with a tourney early??

That seems to be a big deal in judging if a tournament is/was successful.

Heck most can't even take time to use a podium to hand out medals 'cause most are in such a hurry to "get out of there"!!!

I have all the time we need to see my child on the podium!

HUMPH.