I have followed this thread and have been considering my thoughts carefully. I realize I don't have all the information about dates, other events, and conflicts of scheduling. with that being said I believe moving the state series before spring break is a fantastic idea. But to move it 6 or 7 weeks to the begging of February seems to only accommodate baseball. (which 8 and 10 year olds be pleasured by league teams in January is asinine. MLB don't even start tell April,3) And will encroach on football, which is a more compatible sport with wrestling.
As far as adding 6U to state, and growth of participation I believe they are related. I am not a statistician numbers guru but I have been looking at open novice tournaments on Track and just reading # in each division there seems to be a pattern of decline in the transition between 6U and 8U open. Just because a 5 or 6 year old can knock some one down an lay on them and have success is not turning into a skillset to even be an average wrestler at 7 and 8. Your always going to loose kids but the percentage is to high. It looks like we probably loose 50% of 6U kids and of those 50% that stay we probably loose 30% at 8U because they didn't have success with the knock down and flop. I think USA Wrestling is right to not recognize a 6U .