I saw a few things there that REALLY concerned me!
1st. We had 14 year olds on half mats. I was of the understanding the 14 years olds were always to wrestle on a full mat. When this issue was brought up we felt like they were just looking right through us and had more important things to do. Well, when you have two young men at 175 lbs. trying to wrestle on a half mat, its pretty important! That's just not very much room! There was a lot of going out of bounds and it really effected these guys being able to set up and work moves.
2nd. The 8 and under Heavy Weight class was pretty upsetting. They had 3 round robin brackets and in each brackets there were huge weight differences. They had kids that weighed 91 lbs going up againest kids that were over 130 lbs. They also did not mark the actual weight on the arms of all the kids. Some of them had the weight and some just said HWT. This was brought to their attention on Friday night (MORE THEN PLENTY OF TIME TO MAKE CHANGES) and we were informed (very rudely) that they had tried to group them by their ranking! I just don't understand that! OK this 52lb A wrestler is good to go againest this 88lb A wrestler. That just don't make any sense! We were also told that they where allowed 25lbs. I thought at 8U they were only allowed 15lbs. There were plenty of kids to wrestle and every bracket had these mismatches. They could of filled these brackets in 10lb to 15lb increments and made it a lot more competitive. I felt like they had no reguard for fairness or the safety of these kids. We even had refs looking at the size difference and looking up at the coaches.
I am just glad no one was hurt!
I hope the people at Maize will take the time next year to address these issues. I would also like to try to hear a response from someone who is more knowledgable of the rules then I and let me know if my concerns are valid.