Rossville Wrestling Club dropped their 14&under age division due to money. They are more worried about making money than giving kids mat time. Every year at the state body meeting the emphasis is keeping kids in the sport and giving them more mat time. About 5 years ago the emphasis was to use round robins vs brackets for more mat time. I've been to tournaments where there were 15 14&under wrestlers and the division was never cancelled. This is a quote from their club "The 14 and under age group - we didn't have enough to justify the mat time". Since when do we have to justify mat time to any kid at any age? Wrestling is about the kids, not making money.

Shari, I can understand Mr. Dunn AKA Swoop has ruffled your feathers a bit, I'll try and take a different approach. Just as you were hoping for some understanding, we too would like some! Apparently technology failed everyone and our club got no notification that the 14u division was cancelled. Mr. Dunn happened to stumble upon the talk forum and found this out yesterday about 4ish PM. Now here's where a little understanding on your part would have been great, the canceling of the 14u division didn't just impact those 14u wrestlers. Of our 6 14u wrestlers 3 of them had younger siblings and those families didn't want to make the drive to Rossville if both of their kids wouldn't be wrestling. 2 more of our wrestlers were relying on rides from 14u kids' families. Yes a refund was offered for the 14u kids but can't you have some understanding where the 14u kids weren't the only ones impacted?

Mr. Stivers the matrix has been a tricky thing this season. Unfortunately both of my boys are in the same age group this year AND happen to be in the same weight class. They're in a bigger weight class for their age (8u-110) so getting them matches is hit and miss. Before we signed up for the Rossville tournament there were 2 wrestlers showing on the matrix for 8u-110. A couple days after we signed up there were still only 2 wrestlers showing, giving us the impression that our boys never showed up on the matrix. I'm not a track expert so I don't know if it needed updated periodically or if it does it on its own, but there were other weights listed with 0 wrestlers entered and our club did in fact register kids at those weights.

Our wrestling club is a very small club that has quite a few beginner wrestlers and we decided to go to a smaller tournament because of our high number of novice wrestlers and our coaches have a very good friend that is starting out in the Rossville Wrestling Club so we wanted to support them, those are the reasons Our coaches chose Rossville over Johnson County.