Coach Ed,

First I want to say that I admire very much your efforts both as a coach and as the person leading the drive to promote girls wrestling in Kansas. I have a great deal of respect for you for that. I have a second grade daughter and over the last five years I have often thought it would be tremendous if there was a girls division.

I'm going to take exception with a couple of aspects of your post. I believe it could give the impression that anyone who posted before on this subject should not offer a negative comment about the costs of our youth wrestling program and should instead be making positive comments about the benefits of youth wrestling. I believe that you could get into the profile of just about any of the people who posted before you and find that they have also made positive comments about the benefits of youth wrestling to their children or the kids that they coach. Check out Mike Furches' post in Starting Wrestling Age topic. He agrees with you about parents being able to handle the stress of wrestling. I listed a sight that had an article that also is designed to inform new parents about the benefits of wrestling:
http://www.waucondawrestling.org/YC/ycParents.htm

A person can be very positive overall about our sport, but that doesn't mean that they agree with everything about it and maybe what they don't agree with is something that might need to change to improve the sport participation for everyone.

I don't think any of us would disagree with your statement that coaches and parents themselves can drive kids out of the sport. Does that not also happen in basketball or football or any other sport? Yes I believe the intensity of our sport can also drive kids away. Again though I am sure that at least happens in football. These are all things though that happen after a kid has already started. Excessive cost is something that keeps some kids away before they even get to the starting blocks. I do not think we can be oblivious to the personal financial hardship that many individuals are confronted with today. I understand the difficulties that Coach Travius is encountering in the area that his club serves the community in. We recently signed my daughter up for a second grade girls basketball league that several parents were financially unable to handle the $75 cost due to a parent recently being laid off and their other family needs. I just believe it is a real life personal issue for many families right now in this economy and that the personal finance issue does keep some from even starting the sport. It makes sense to me that the higher these expenses become that more families in the future will decide not to even start the sport.