Great tournament. Lots of great competition, good officiating, and very well organized. It was good to return to the motherland for the first time in years.

Oh, and to the person who smashed out my tail light in the rear parking lot and didn't leave a note...feel free to PM me if your karma needs a boost.

Very Well Run!!!

Wouldn't expect anything else but near perfection from the Manhatten club. When you got Bob Gonzalez as your leader you are in pretty good hands! His kid and high school cast is always top notch. We love it and will choose it over Tulsa Nationals any day. Thanks Manhatten.

Agree that the tournament was run well. I do however want to vent as my son (10 and under 134) and one other kid (10 and under 132) were combined with the 10 and under 170 weight class. Both of the kids gave up over 30# to the kids they were wrestling. USAW Rule 4-4-2 states that no wrestler at age 10 and under shall wrestle another wrestler with a weight spread of 20 pounds. My son ended up with a hyperextended knee in the championship match giving up 36 pounds.

When I complained to the tournament director, she said she didn't want to hear it.

I can't agree more. Bob is the man. He has always produced champions and developed men with great character. His dedication to our sport is awesome!

It will be interesting to see when his son Tyler takes over Manhatten or a club somewhere else. I'm know it will be the same.

Stand up dudes for sure! Keep it up Gonzo family.

Jakes dad send her the doctors bill. I bet she will talk then

Thanks Lucas. Fortunately it appears to be minor and hopefully there will be no doctors bills. However this rule is in place to prevent kids from being injured. This could have ended up alot worse then it did. The tournament director did not appear to know the difference between 150# weight class and heavyweight.

What exactly did you say to the tournament director? Did you tell her you son was injured or just that it was BS that the weights were combined?

I am not sure why you had your son wrestle the match giving up that much weight. I can't imagine that there is any shame in forfeiting a match when wrestling the match could have worse consequences. I guess what I am saying is, that does not sound like a good combining of brackets based on weight differential, and I would not have had a problem forfeiting the match.

I told her I knew nothing could happen now but my son was injured and in the future they should pay attention to the weight differences. She said that with Heavyweights they do not know the wrestlers weight in advance, so she would not have known there was a weight difference. I tried to explain to her there was a 150# class and a 170# class in 10 and under. I tried to explain that they would know the exact weights at weigh ins and with trackwrestling the brackets could easily be changed prior to the start of the tournament. That is when she said she did not want to discuss it further. I was very calm.

We have run into this year also. I have printed out the weigh rules and plan on taking it to tournaments with me. If we are combined in hwt again I will demaned to know the weight when I see the bracket. I now send in my sons exact weight to ever tournament. These rules are for the safety of our kids they need to be followed.

Large weight differences can be discussed prior to wrestling.
Kids can just take their medal and go home or at the match they can decide not to wrestle it. Tournament people do their best to match kids up. This happens in the larger and smaller weights.
My suggestion is call in advance.

Please do not make me out to be some heartless person - saying I didn't want to deal with it. You failed to mention that you didn't bring any of this to my attention until after the tournament was over and I was right in the middle of trying to get championship brackets and medal rounds taken care of. My point to you is that all you would have had to do was communicate with me upon entry or at weigh-in about your son's actual weight - at that time I could do something about it - after the day is completely over - what would you suggest I do? I am sorry that your son got hurt - I would never intentionally put a child in that situation.

I would also like to clarify that your son was initially entered into the tournament, by your club, as 10u Heavyweight - there was never an actual weight provided - before initial bracketing. Everyone knows that when you have a HWT entry - you also must attach actual weight - when you have 800 kids you are bracketing - you have to rely on receiving accurate information.

Again, I apologize that your son was injured and that he was put in this situation.

I would like to thank all of the clubs that supported the Little Apple Classic - it was great to see some teams that we don't ususally see until at State!

I know there was some great competition!

I also would like to thank Jr Viking Wrestling Club and Salina Wrestling Club for hosting satellite weigh-ins. It worked out great!

We love Gonzo and appreciate all that he does for our High School program and Wrestling in the state of Kansas! With no disrespect to Gonzo.... It took a great group of parents working as a team to pull off our tournament. Thank you Parents for all that you do for the KIDS that wrestle in Kansas. I also want to thank Aricca Wallace, Jim Lund and their crew for all they do to make sure our tournament is a success.

MAMMW, Thanks for your reply. As I said yesterday at the tournament I didn't really want anything other then for you to understand the situation. You continue to say we signed up as Heavyweight. This is not true. We signed up as 150# weight class. If you look at the USAW by laws at age group 10 and under there is a 150# weight class and a 170# weight class. Neither are called heavyweight. You knew my sons exact weight because you quoted to me yesterday. I agree we didn't say anything until after the tournament was over, but that was bec ause we didn't know the size of the other kids until after the tournament had started and pretty much played with the hand we were dealt. My point is simply that this is something we all should learn from and that you as the tournament director should look for in the future.

Thank you again for listening.

Jake's Dad, I am the person who setup the Tournament with TrackWrestling. When I go back and look, then compare to the rules, I see that the upper weigh classes for those age groups were left out.

When I setup the tournament, I compared the weight classes per division with another tournament and imported those settings. I assumed that they were the State defined weight classes and did not look any further.

I know we work really hard to create brackets that are competitive, fair, and seated. We always want wrestlers to have someone to wrestle and not just give them a metal. We do combined brackets at times, but always post on the bracket when it is combined.

I am not the Tournament Director, only the TrackWrestling Admin. I see a few things that I will bring up with the Tournament Committee that could help the way we can do next year’s tournament to help prevent this type of thing from happening again.

1) Actually post on our Flier and on usawks website, what weight class we will use. We will still combine weight classes, but at least it would be easier for someone to bring to our attention when we leave out a weight class.
2) Request that all HWT weight class wrestlers provide us with the estimated weigh a wrestler weighs so we can monitor that the weight spread is within the rules.

I am glad to hear your son is not seriously hurt. This was a mistake on my part when I built the tournament. I do wish that the parents would have brought this to their coaches attention, who should of then brought it to our attention so we could have fixed this.

We would never intentionally build a tournament where we think a youth might get hurt. An example of this is why you saw funny numbering of the MAT's so we could keep heavier kids from wrestling next to smaller kids.

Thanks for the input; it will only help make other tournaments in the future better.

Jim Lund
TrackWrestling Admin for the MOKWC club.

Jim, Thank you for your input. Really, that is all I wanted is to make sure the situation was noticed and to make sure everyone understands the weight classes. This has been a good education for all of us.

I do want to congratulate your group for a great tournament. I agree it was a very well run tournament with great competition and very good ref's. We always look forwart to The Little Apple Classic.

Arrica and Jim have always been very helpful and do there best to run a tournament.

Matt

Well run tournament. Our Club was out of there by 4:00 and had great competition. The only suggestion I could make is look at what age/weights wrestling on 1/4 mats. 12&U 120 and under and the big 10&U (100lbs +) on 1/4 mats seemed a little small. Moving some of the 12&U to the small gym might have also opened up the large gym (granted it would only be a few wrestlers and families). I think even the few would have helped some.

Overall it was a great tournament with great wrestling. Good Job Manhattan