I have been a proponent of cutting off the kids state tournament at 14 and under with 8th grade being the limit. It is by no means meaning to stop the older boys and girls from wrestling during that time at all. It is meant to try to get the best of the best to be part of the national teams.
You could even tweak the format if you want the older kids and eliminate the qualifying rounds, have an open state tourney at the same time as kids and divide it like the Brute Nationals by grade. This could even be done in the weeks prior to state--perhaps the Wichita Classic could evolve in to this format and put one of the NATIONAL tags on their tournament by opening it up.
I just think we lose a lot of good potential freestyle wrestlers for our cadet and junior national teams.
We could start our freestyle/greco season after kids state and if we had our state freestyle/greco tourney in May as opposed to June you could get your national teams set earlier. Have a series of weekend clinics/camps at various parts of the state that lead up to the national events.
Just an idea is all, i have seen similar formats work in other states. I think the key difference in those states are that folkstyle was basically a high school thing and freestyle/greco was the offseason emphasis.
