I understand that there has been a lot of chatter regarding The Wrestling Tourney and Preferred Educational Software because of the issues this past weekend for Kansas regional wrestling tournaments. I would like to address the Kansas wrestling community.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused tournament managers and their fans. We experienced an unexpected and extremely large volume of traffic on Friday and Saturday which our server could not handle. The number of sessions per day went from an average of 2500 per day throughout the season to over 25,000 on each day. (Friday and Saturday).

There was not enough time to make any technical changes. However, we are replacing our current server with a much more capable server this week. This was our first venture in this type of service for fans and are taking immediate action to correct the problem. This will do a much better job handling the large volume of traffic.

Our software is a PC based system and not web-based. We take a different approach than TrackWrestling. They have a great product. Our cost is a one time purchase and not an annual recurring fee. Upgrades are free of charge from our website. There are many capable programs out there for running wrestling tournaments. We have been providing wrestling software for schools for over 25 years and have over 7000 users.

Our server www.TheWrestlingTourney.com was initially developed as a means for coaches to enter their rosters and save hours of entry time for tournament managers. Prior to this year, managers had the option to generate an entire website at the click of their mouse with our desktop software. They then sent these files to their own web server. Many regional sites did just this and is an excellent (free) alternative. This year we provided another free option for managers to post to our web server if they did not have the means or resources to do this locally. This service (online entry and posting results) comes at no charge. Many states do this method also, linking all their regional sites on one web page on their state server.

As for the tournament software itself, we think we provide a great solution. I received very few calls regarding the performance and operation of the software. I know that your state association will make a decision that would be economical and effective for Kansas wrestling.