We attended the Lansing king of the jungle tourny this past weekend. Overal I thought was pretty good other than the awards given to the novice wrestler. The awards given was a super cheap ribbon for all places. I had two kids that took first and another one get 2nd and the look on there faces when they was handed a ribbon instead of a medal was heart breaking. I also seen other kids with the same look when they received theirs. I now they are just novice but they are still wrestlers that put in the time and effort not to mention they paid the same as anyone else. If wrestlers are going to get ribbons then they should go show animals at 4 H and not wrestle.

I did say something when I was at the table and the last gave one of my kids a metal from last year and was a bronze metal.

You guys should be ashamed and embarrassed and should make it right with every one of them. I know you want to make money at the tournys but medals are cheap and by screwing over the novice wrestlers are not the way to do it.

I know I am going to catch some flak for this comment, but if you want the nice awards go to the bigger open tournaments. Work harder to place at them, and don't attend novice. Novice tournaments are set up to be a teaching tournament not a big award and production tournament. Back in the day there was no such thing as Novice or even B brackets. If you wanted an award, usually a small medal (until state) you worked harder to improve to get it. If yiu didn't get a medal at the tournament yes you were heart broken, but you went back to the room and worked harder so it didn't happen again.

This is just my opinion.

Lance Geyer

I guess everyone is in titled a opinion. I as a dad don't believe in getting awards for just being there. I don't even let my personal kids accept at award if they get last place but when they earn it and deserve it then they get it. Not to mention there flyer even said medals and brackets for all 1st placers. As far as going to bigger tournys for just an award we have gone to smaller tournys like Linn co and Allen co and they all gave medals away even with just 250 kids in the entire tourny.

Thanks for the feedback.

This was our first tournament, and our biggest difficulty came with awards. Order and production delays (because of the Chinese New Year, believe it or not) severely limited our options. We customized what we could with the first place medals and brackets for the open divisions but we were a little stuck. Rather than hand out uncustomized generic medals to the novices--which was our only other option--we decided to go with the customized ribbons.

Next year we will have more lead time and the awards will be better--we are shooting for some sort of crown or real big crown medal for first place--and we will post them in advance.

That said, if we have open and novice divisions next time, the novice divisions won't get the same awards as the open divisions. That's pretty standard practice. We treat the novice side, including for our own kids, just like Lance Geyer said: for teaching and learning. Combined Open/Novice tournaments allow novice wrestlers to learn alongside more advanced kids without getting thumped, and they also let novice wrestlers experience a bigger style tournament and have something to shoot for.

Sorry if some of the novice kids did not like the ribbons, but all of them got to wrestle against fair competition at a big tournament alongside some of the best wrestlers in the state and region.

Tom Bruscino
Lion Elite

I will be honest on this topic. anything more than a ribbon at the kids level is ridiculous. its all about the mat time and learning how to wrestle. not the award chasing. my son got some medals from school tournaments this year that were small in comparison to what he has hanging on his wall and shelves from kids tournaments over the years. I think maybe just a couple of the bigger tournaments in ks should give away anything more than a ribbon. that's just my opinion. we all know that the bigger the prize the more people come. the clubs rely on those entries to survive is why it happens.

Tom, you did bring in some stiff competition especially in the open ranks. I would have to say that my son's bracket will produce 2 and possibly 3 State Placers and another 1 or 2 that qualify for State.