Our first year making the 3 hr. trip to try for a belt.Oh man, was it worth it. What a tournament. Great job Maize!!!
I am glad to hear the kid with the elbow injury is doing better, it looked bad.

A lot of stories posted about intense emotions Sat. I was in the room with the older 14 year old boys. I must have missed all the controversy. All I witnessed was great competition at a high level. MY EXPERIENCE WAS 100% POSITIVE. Unfortunately, I waited until 8th grade to attend and won't get this experience and chance for a belt again. I hope any one on the fence about this tournament does attend. It was great and clearly very competitive.

I took my son to Maize for his second Open tournament he ever wrestled so that my parents could come over from Pratt to watch their grandson wrestle. That was back in 2003 and I was amazed at the size (number of wrestlers) of the tournament and the level of competition in the gym we were in. My son won the first match of his Open career and although he got beat out, we all had a great time and will always remember making the tournament.

Maize club,
Great job, ran a little long, but the compotision was fierce!!! Every belt bracket was LOADED, with the best kids Kansas has to offer, even some from out of state. This is one tough event, and one we look forward to each year. Keep up the good work.

I guess this is the best place to thank a few coaches from yesterday. My son was wrestling one of is good friends. My son made a mistake and hurt his friend during the match. While the medics took care of Robert my son was a mess. He was shook up and very worried. Coach Ike from maize I think and several of the coaches from Bishop Carrol made it a point to explain to my son that it is a rough sport and accidents do happen. Coach Wunsch was also there to offer words of encouragement for Justin. Thank you to the Garcia's from Bishop Carroll for allowing Justin to ride to the hospital with Robert to make sure he was ok.

After reading all the negative posts from yesterday I thought it was fitting to show that Two kids were in the finals for the belt when one kid did something dangerous and hurt the other kid. What happened after that was what wrestling is really about. The families, coaches, medics, and wrestlers banded together to handle the situation with class. The belt was laying on the mat being ignored while prayers were said, hugs were given and kind words were shared.

I am happy to report that Rober Garcia was not seriously injured and he and Justin were back to laughing and goofing off when they left the hospital.

Thanks to everyone involved yesterday.

Paul Mcphillips

While agree it is a great tournament, I disagree with the fact that weights are combine I understand the fact that it makes things longer and we all know that tournaments are long but if you combine weights I believe that if in the finals going for first you have the best from both weights battling it out do they both not deserve to be recognized with the fact they both deserve the belt since the both equally fought to not only get there but worked hard against kids not at their weight!! I do have to say the care and sportsmanship and friendship we all witnessed yesterday was amazing and this is what we are doing in this sport raising our youngmen and women to grow into respectable young men and women who support and pick eachother up and have eachothers backs !!! Great Job boys was a day of great accomplishments and tears and heartbreak!!!

I disagree. We had a kid that is one of the lighter kids in his age group. And it has happend every year he has wrestled. He had to wrestle bigger kids during the year because there wasn't enough kids his size at the local tourneys. It made him better, and he ended up winning a couple of state title because of it. This kid loses lots of matches during the year, but once State comes around, and he is wrestling kids his size, he is nails tough. That kid or his parents know that if there had been a bracket with only his weight class, he might have won a belt yesterday. Instead he got whipped in the finals, and hopefully learned something more valuable than a belt from it.

By the way, congrats to all of us for not having the forum filled up with "refs were horrible" posts. Great job to Maize and the referee crew.

I didn't hear the entry count, but it seemed like a lot. Someone earlier complained about how long it ran. Maize runs thru probably 1000 kids in a day. It takes Tulsa, USJOC, etc. 3 days to run 1500 thru.....Noone's complaining that they DIDN"T have to rent a motel room, while finding some really good competition.

Great tournament and very good level of competition. Mats for the larger weights were a little small, lots of out of bounds and restarts. Ref's were good, everyone bags on them when they are bad! Let's make sure we give them credit when they are good! One of my favorite events of the year besides the classic and state! Well done maize.

Congratulations to Cole Moses and Mason Turner for winning 4 straight battle of the belt championships. Great tourney year in and year out. See ya next year.

Didn't complain!! Just facts. Wrestle semis at 4:30- wrestle finales at 8:30. Seems long to me. This isn't a National tourney. I was being positive, don't twist it around.

Any results coming???

I think I know the kid that Doug747 is referring to and he is right.....the kid is tough, just undersized when brackets get combined. My son has been on the bottom of combined weights at Maize and has battled bigger kids in the finals and got whipped, but I think those experiences have helped him too.

In this case it is not just being undersized that got our kid whipped, but sometimes it is...........