I, for one, truly appreciate the worthwhile discussion on this topic and others. It often seems toward the end of the year, that these topics come to the forefront. Exactly why, I have long discussed having a Spring meeting of the District. In fact we did have one two years ago. It was attended by three clubs.

I try to stimulate discussion on these topics in the Fall meeting ... but by then ... people have forgotten. At this years District meeting (attended by about 150), after the vote for Ottawa and the vote for maintaining the split format, I warned those in attendance to expect a long day. Granted, we might have been able to shave 45 minutes, maybe even an hour! And I don't know what the time costs would have been with only going with 6 mats in the afternoon.

I did some calculations on the tourney. We had 14 mats in the morning ... and 7 in the afternoon. In the 8U we held 217 matches. 10U wrestled 212, 12U had 237, 14U was our biggest with 258, 16U wrestled 189, and the 6U we had 147 matches. That makes a total of 1,260 matches. I figure that is a substantial day even if we held Districts in a facility that could hold 10 full mats. I think, that is 126 per mat ... a long day by any standard.

If we have 4,000 spectators as suggested by Mr. Miller (by the way, I kept my appointment today, and they confirmed your suspicions .... lol) it takes a heck of a facility. Some very good ones have been offered ... and I welcome facts and figures on them. But I do know, there are issues such as rent, concessions being under contract, and lack of seating that would have to be addressed. Something I am willing to look into, after the season is over, and I have a chance to catch my breath.

Randy