I would like to personally thank everyone who attended the 2017 "Battle of the Belt." I think we ended up with somewhere close to 1400 competitors this year and had at least 7 different states represented. For the most part I feel the tournament ran pretty smoothly, once we got going. The majority of the issues we faced occurred Friday night or early Saturday morning.
I'd like to address some of those:
1. COACHES' PACKETS - there was a huge miscommunication on where the coaches' packets were on Friday evening. The individual that ended up with them wasn't even aware she had them, and wasn't accessible by phone until about 1/2 way through weigh-ins. The Maize Wrestling Club would like to extend our most sincere apologies for the numerous inconveniences this caused.
2. FLOOR PASSES/COACHES' BANDS - this too should been handled much better on our part. I assure you that it will be done the right way next year, with much more preparation.
3. SATELLITE WEIGH-INS - we face this issue every year. In terms of competition, I'd honestly say we are right at the top along with Tournament of Champions in Salina. With this being said, we want to try and accommodate as many wrestlers as we can. Bringing in out of state competition isn't something that just any tournament can do. We started with 33 satellite locations from last year and trimmed that number down to 20. However, as we reached out to various clubs and received multiple requests that number quickly rose to a final 34 locations. We tried to keep that satellites under the control of trustworthy clubs, but that can only go so far. We have tossed around the idea of on-site weigh-ins in the future, or possibly just having 4 additional locations in state.
4. FLOOR CONGESTION - for the most part the floor wasn't too congested, but we feel we can still improve on this come next year. Having 14 full mats on the floor provided us with 16 different surfaces, but also cut into any excess room we would have. During our clean-up we were already planning a better layout for our future tournaments.
5. TRACKWRESTLING - for some reason Trackwrestling wasn't updating very well throughout the tournament. Fortunately we didn't have any major computer issues, but for those following on their phones it became somewhat of a hassle when the brackets were taking longer than expected to update. This caused us to have to make a large number of calls to the mats for wrestlers who weren't present. I guess when in doubt go old school and read the brackets on the walls.
6. NOVICE DIVISION - once again there were some issues with wrestlers entering the novice division that should definitely be in the open division. We tried to screen the entries as best we could during the seeding meeting. We actually moved a handful of wrestlers out of the novice and into the open division after doing a little research on them. Unfortunately there will always be trophy hunting parents.
We would love to hear any feedback, positive or negative, that you may have so that we can continue to build this tournament in the years to come.
Again, thank you to all the participants, coaches, officials, parents, and volunteers!
KANSAS WRESTLING IS ALIVE AND WELL!!
Derek Patterson
Maize Wrestling Club
