As always someone has to complain. Seating was not bad sit in the middle and you can see very well. As for seeding the tournament, they do separate the paste Brute Champions, but with that many entries there is always a chance that some may wrestle on the same side. Look at it this way they have to get the job done on the mat anyway. Another thing to look at, Did they seed the Senior National tournament? I doubt it, look at the 160 bracket and you will see that it was not. At the other national tournament in the past they never seeded them either. I am a coach, a state director in this event, and I also volunteered to help at tables when I was not coaching. You can volunteer and help us make this tournament better or you could not its your choice. Now another topic all three tournamets are set for the same week. Brute is the first to set their dates, followed by the other two, this makes it hard for parents and coaches to choose where to go. Now lets all jump in and start helping and volunteer for the tournament and it will continue to get better each year.
Mel
They DID NOT seperate past Brute Champions or if they did they overlooked several. Yes they DO seed Senior Nationals. The editor of WIN Magazine gets that job. At the very least you could ask for HS State placings so you wouldn't end up with two state champions on one side and two state qualifiers on the other. The only seperation criteria used was state residency.
The tournament will never get better with the high prices and early deadlines. They could have used more surfaces and finished earlier. Heck, the kids could have been finished on Friday! Four days in the same building is WAY too much for me. I have been to Reno, Cedar Falls, but not to Virginia Beach. I am going back to Cedar Falls where I will never be harassed to leave the floor, where I get a FREE coach pass, where I can walk up and enter so I don't have to worry about weight changes and a penalty, where the age groups are not diluted (1394 wrestlers resulting in 900 All Americans) by having one for each year of school, where if you win a round robin bracket you don't have to wrestle the second place kid again to be champion, where we don't ask high school kids to show up at 7:30am for a parade and video only to have them wait until 11:30am to wrestle. The awards are great, I love Municipal Auditorium, the volunteers were awesome, Trackwrestling worked perfectly, but it is too expensive and stretched out WAY too long. Oh an I forgot to mention the parking issue due to the 4500 girls playing volleyball next door. I am sure the wrestlers, those who visited, loved that benefit.
We are a USA wrestling organization and we should support USA Wrestling. I tried it and all weekend I was wishing I was in Cedar Falls.
