I'm sure not complaining about the travel time. But my calculations of 16-man brackets shows there is a possibility of 112 matches in the first round, 56 in the quarterfinals, 56 in consolation first round, and 56 in consolation quarterfinals. This is 280 matches divided by 2 mats times an average of 5 minutes per match (assuming a few pins, byes, etc). I come up with 700 minutes of wrestling. The tournament starts at 1:00. This would be a mere 11.66667 hours of wrestling assuming there is not a 45-minute delay like there was in Holton a few years ago when a young stallion from Abilene broke his arm on mat 3. Then make weight, grab a bite at the aforementioned truck stop Subway, and back to the room to get some sleep.
In 2005, Colby started the championship semifinals at 11:00 on Saturday morning. The serious wrestlers aren't out until 2:00 in the morning very often during the season. Why expect them to be up that late the night before their biggest matches of the season?
Typically you figure 13-15 matches per hour. This takes into consideration the byes, pins, and shortened 1st period on the back side. Since there are only 15 teams in the Colby regional this will be 364 matches. That works out to 182 per mat. Since there will be opens by many schools we will go with 15 matches per hour. That works out to 12.13 hours. With no breaks you could wrestle just 6 hours on Friday and be done at 7pm and then 6 hours or a little more on Saturday and be on the road in the late afternoon even with an hour lunch break. It can be done but you won't be able to stop wrestling much and your officials will get a little worn out.
