I would like to point out that our summer freestyle programs are very unorganized compared to other states, many of our high school kids have no interest in summer wrestling. They would much rather play baseball and do other things than wrestle all year. Having been to many freestyle tournaments myself they are very laid back, lots of fun for sure, but the intensity and will to win at these non national tournaments is not the same as folkstyle here in kansas. That being said it is a major reason I still support the 16 and U age group.

As far as mat space is concerned I tend to have a different opinion than Mr. Cokeley does. As long as I have been around kids wrestling I have never seen anything that amounts to a serious injury to competitiors from the participants of two seperate mats running into each other. Its been 15 years now and I've yet to see it happpen, not to say that it has never happened or couldn't, its just not a common thing. As far as going out of bounds in concerned, it doens't matter how big of a mat you give kids they are going to go out of bounds. Heck Salina had one of the bigggest mats I've ever seen down on mat 14 and kids were still going out. Coaches are still teaching kids to use the edge of the mat. The way to stop kids from going out is make them stay in the center and call stalling for those wrestlers who don't circle to the center, push kids out of bounds when they stand up, or run out of bounds when they stand up. I use this on 1/2 mats and the wrestling stays in bounds most of the match.

I'm not against using full mats, in fact I much prefer them, but I am against taking out age groups, and disallowing another simply for the purpose of accomodating the other 4. Perhaps there can be a way to make room for every age class.