My son wrestled in the late 90s. IMO wrestling-certainly less than BB and FB, was almost totally a family only attending event--mom, dad, smaller kids, a few grandmas and pappys (same for HS soccer, VB, baseball, track). Very few athletes from other sports came to watch, no staff, no general public. My local HS had only one at home dual this year--parents night--everything else was tournaments--some 2 hours away--the regional will be 2++hours away followed by the State 3++ hours away. IMO lack of at-home matches kills local fan interest and participation. I like tournaments, but big 2 day events, or even far away one day tournaments (3 to 4 hours round trip driving plus sitting for 8-10 hours, are killers on us older fans/folks. Would like to see-attend more. Personally try to see the Leavenworth Challenger (5 miles), the Bobcat Classic (6 miles), a home match (2miles), the regional if held KC,KS local, and the Metro Classic 10 miles). But the mostly away match/meet/tournament system is working against most fans. Could not attend the KVL tournament at Mill Valley--helping wife administer The ACT on Saturday AM--otherwise would have gone.
I have to agree with Contrarian here. Lack of home meets makes building the fan base for wrestling tough. Also, the tournament format is very difficult for a rookie to the sport to follow. Trying to understand how matches are scored in addition to how the team race is scored is confusing. You mean he gets 2 points for the take down, but if he wins he gets 2 advancement points and 1.5 points for a tech fall which is if he wins by 15 or more? That can get confusing pretty quick. Also a lot of sitting for not much watching if you are just there to support 1 team.
More home duals- and I think single duals would help build fans. That is much easier to understand and easier to attend. The problem is there is no incentive for coaches to schedule those competitions when we are trying to get our teams ready for regional and state TOURNAMENTS. If there was a Dual State tournament- I believe coaches would start to balance their scheduling between duals and tournaments because there would then be a reason to focus on dual competitions.
I personally miss the single dual format- we wrestled a lot of them in Norton in the 90's. The stands were usually full and very often rocking. We would generally out draw the basketball team. It was a great atmosphere- and I think a move away from that has helped get wrestlers ready for a state tournament, but has hurt the ability to draw new spectators to the sport.
