First of all we would like to thank all of the wrestlers and teams that came out and competed at the 2018 Battle of the Belt this past weekend. At the end of the day, we had somewhere around 1650 wrestlers competing for a belt (300+ more than last year's tournament). It was great seeing a number of girls competing in our new girl's division this year as well. Lots of tough young ladies out there! The competition was stellar as always! I was also very impressed with the Rudis store! Those guys sure know how to roll.


Few issues to address:

1) Ticket Sales -- I was told that the line to purchase tickets was insane. We had the ticket office open Friday night during weigh-ins, but with so many traveling in late on Friday or early on Saturday, I'm sure that there was still a large number of families needing to purchase tickets on Saturday morning. The addition of 300+ wrestlers this year (and families) only added to the congestion. We are in the works of figuring out a better system for next year; perhaps an online option to purchase ahead of time.

2) Novice Division -- every year we run into out-of-state wrestlers entering the novice division "illegally" if you would. We released the wrestler list early this year with hopes of weeding out some of those wrestlers, which we did in some instances, but obviously some were missed. Some of those wrestlers have multiple Trackwrestling profiles, so the only way to truly catch them is to search by their name, not just clicking on the entry as it was linked to different profile. We will continue to do the best that we can with policing this in the future.

3) Floor Congestion -- I know there was some floor congestion this year preventing some parents from seeing the mats. Again, this is something we run into each year, but is somewhat unavoidable when you're dealing with the numbers that we had.

4) 5th/6th Place Matches -- this year we decided to place through top 6 in the open division and do away with true 2nd. Overall, I think this was a good move. There were some very tough brackets and this allowed kids the opportunity to get another match, as well as earn a medal. Around 11:30 on Friday night, I noticed that the brackets were not set up for 5th/6th placing (still true 2nd as we did last year). I quickly got with our Trackwrestling coordinator and had him resolve the issue. For some reason though, not all of the brackets were fixed correctly. I'd like to personally apologize to any of the 5th/6th place wrestlers that were not able to wrestle that match.

5) Awards Table -- the arena had the head table and awards table on the elevated platforms (without our asking or knowledge) prior to us entering the arena for setups on Friday. This caused a ton of congestion come awards time. We will address this issue with the arena going forward.

6) 2nd Session Start Time -- I'm more upset about this than anything. I feel like we could have started the 2nd session around 2pm (I believe it was about 3pm when we finally got rolling). As mats were finishing up in the 1st session we moved matches around, but started running into computer issues and whatnot. We then ran into the issues of not having the allotted time between matches if we were to run weight classes on more than 2 mats. The excessive increase in numbers from last year didn't help things either. We had no idea we were looking at roughly 1700 wrestlers until we closed registration. I feel like after the 2nd session got going things ran pretty smooth, and a 9:30pm finish time was pretty reasonable considering all things.


We would love to hear any feedback, positive or negative, that you may have so that we can continue to build this tournament in the years to come.

Again, thank you to all the participants, coaches, officials, parents, and volunteers!

KANSAS WRESTLING IS ALIVE AND WELL!!


Also - we had a few items found at the conclusion of the tournament. If you are missing something please email me at maizewrestlingks@gmail.com with a brief description and contact info.

Great tournament, great competition!! Our only complaints are the 10:15pm end time, the floor congestion & not being able to take recording devices in. Tournament time couldn't really be helped. But as for the floor congestion, could you maybe line the fencing with chairs? I'm sure the coaches that were there all day would have loved to sit down without having to walk to the stands for 4 mins, only to turn back & head to the mat again. Also, only allowing carded coaches to get the wrist bands.....Moms, Dads, Grandparents,etc. shouldn't be allowed to get a band because it only adds to the congestion. Why weren't recording devices allowed? I can understand if it was a concert but a kids wrestling tournament? Unless things have changed this year, we're able to take them in at state-just no tripods.

Like I said, great tournament, awesome competition. Loved the new belts & the added girls division!!

Ashlie

Thanks for the feeback Ashlie.

I wasn't aware that recording devices were not allowed to be brought in. This will be address with the arena. No reason for that. Sound like someone was trying to take their job a bit more serious than needed (arena security).

I like the chair idea. We will look into that for next year. We've tried to get the arena to allow us to take out the first few rows of chairs in the stands and push the barriers back a few more feet, but due to fire code we aren't allowed to do such. Unfortunately we may have finally outgrown the arena. We love the venue, but it may not be as accommodating in the future as we'd like.

1st off thank you for taking suggestions/feedback. 2nd year we’ve gone and definitely plan on coming back.

Floor congestion was biggest issue. Seemed to be lots of people who were willing to pay an extra $20 to be able to camp out along the inside of the fence for better viewing. Might consider limiting floor pass sales to those w/coach cards only...maybe even bronze card holders to limit it even further? Also noticed that the security personnel over behind mats 1-3 didn’t seem at all interested in checking for bands as people passed through. Is it possible that some of the people on the inside of the fencing had no bands and took advantage of this?

Also, was surprised to find out floor pass didn’t cover admission. I assume it’s because floor pass is sold by club/admission sold by arena. Would be nice to only have to stand in one line if admission was either waived or rolled in to cost of floor pass.

More of an arena issue but concession lines were LONG. Noticed they only had one of two upstairs stands open, with #’s increasing each year they should at least consider opening the second stand upstairs.

KCMO area MO side remote weigh-ins would be nice, especially for those in the afternoon session so families can have the option of driving down morning of and not have to choose between staying two nights or a three hr drive at 10pm. Understand completely that integrity of the event can become an issue with a lot of remotes though.

1700 wrestlers. If event continues to grow in popularity and integrity of novice division is an issue maybe ditch the novice division altogether? Or consider running novice one day and open the other? Was a marathon for the coaches and families who had kids in each session.

Seeding. You’re doing the best you can and integrity of those registering kids is being relied upon, but there’s a MO club who brought 33kids. Of those 33 29 were open entries and all but 3 were registered as “AAA”. Looking at track profiles the majority have never wrestled much less placed in a national tournament; many weren’t even MO state tournament qualifiers last year but were registered as “national placers”in an attempt to seed them higher. For the record my son didn’t lose to one of them, but it was a running joke among the kids that knew these wrestlers and its frustrating to see truly deserving kids have a tougher hill to climb because others choose to game the system. Tough, if possible at all, to police this but they were pretty blatant about it. If it’s an issue with other clubs as well might as well just go blind draw.

1-Definitely reduce the floor passes to carded coaches only. The gate by mats 1-3 allowed me to walk thru til mid afternoon. When I got my coaching pass wristband from our packet, I put it in my wallet, as I was going thru bag check, handing out other coaches bands, etc., and until one of the security guys at the head table end caught me and of course it triggered the "oops, forgot to put it on" bell, I probably would have gone the whole day without putting it on. But too many non-coaches on the floor. Putting chairs inside the rail sounds good, but that might bring more people to the floor for a nice chair close to the action!

2-Someone at the tourney mentioned running the novice division on Friday night to lighten the Saturday load. Getting rid of the novice division wouldn't hurt my feelings, but our novice kids liked wrestling in that venue.

3-I don't know how much it would affect numbers, but if we want this to turn into a national level tourney, the satellite weigh ins should probably be tossed, and make everyone weigh in shoulder to shoulder at the event. I believe there were around 30+ satellite sites, and we were one of them. Is it convenient? Yes. Is it going to kill the tourney if you do onsite weigh ins? I don't think so. Salina Tourney of Champions does it, USJOC does it, Tulsa events do it, Iowa Folkstyle Nats does it, Liberty does it. There are lots of whispers about what teams actually made their kids make weight (you mentioned this in the email that went out to clubs about some kids entering this tourney several weight classes different than what they had wrestled at a national event earlier in the year), and if you want to get rid of any suspicion, do an onsite weigh in. The competition is obviously getting to a point where it is comparable to a USJOC type of event. Most out of towners are either going to come to town the night before and stay the night, or if they drove up Sat morning, they will stay Sat night before driving home. So a Friday night weigh in, and wrestling all day Saturday, probably wouldn't hurt numbers. If anyone is complaining about the late finish time, they need to remember that this was a one day tourney, and to run that many kids through, and still finish in one day, is still way better than what USJOC does, which is start wrestling at 11AM or so the first day, get everyone out by around 6 that night, then wrestle from 8-2PM or so on 2nd day, have everyone wait around till 7:00 to start wrestling the finals.

My only complaint is the number of coaches passes per club. We had 3 kids total on 3 different mats. 1 coach could not have handled that due to all three being up at same time on 1 occasion. I get why you are doing it but up it to 2 passes for the first 5 kids.
We had the same thing happen a TOC the week before. Had 10 kids and had to buy one extra (only allowed 3 per 10). We had 4 kids up at the same time. I think if they have a coaches card and bronze certified. Within reason should be allowed a pass. State level does this.

I think competition level was great at this tournament. Defiantly would attend again

Also didn't know that the girls where allowed to wrestle both open and boys. Flyer said no double dipping. We assumed that was for girls as well. That's why my Daughter signed up for open only. She would have done the girls division as well.

Take the novice belt out, sure it is cool but should deter someone driving 5 hours to get a medal that shouldn’t be in that division.

Great tournament! My son is a first year wrestler in the novice division and he liked it. He's been to Tulsa Nationals, USJOC and Salina TOC and compared this tourney to those, size of venue and number of participants I assume. Gotta keep the novice division and the belts. I heard many novice kids that won belts including my son saying next year when they are open they're gonna win two open belts. Good for motivating some first year kids to continue wrestling. As far as floor congestion you may look into how USJOC had their tourney set up. Only coaches and wrestlers on the floor and only two coaches and 1 wrestler in the gate either wrestling or on deck. That would eliminate all the kids lining the mats and prevent injuries or changes in a match. That way there's really no complaints about view either. A little work on the speaker system would help too. I could hear but many complained they could not. Eliminate satellite weigh ins. That will deter people trying to cheat the system, but also attract those far away looking for big events with integrity. Good job Maize and it was great to not have to travel far for once for a big event thanks!

Thank you to everyone for the feedback. We're already in the works of weeding out some of the issues that we faced this year, as well as in years past.

Again, thank you to all the wrestlers, families, referees, and volunteers for making the 2018 Battle of the Belt the best one yet!!

Good luck to everyone on the remainder of your seasons!