I live in Wisconsin and this is what we have done locally. Cost has been and is always a concern here too. To help offset this cost we have started something else to supplement the regular tournaments. Each club (4 of us so far) will get together with another club and wrestle just before the local high school matches. The only cost is to get there, which half the time it is at your own school. This also gives more of a chance for the beginners to get some mat time before going to a tournament. When a team comes they bring a list of age, weight, and skill level for all the kids to help with the matching up. The high school kids get involved by refereeing, keeping time, score, etc. So far it has gone very well. We have tried to do more than two clubs at a time, but it doesn't work very well, given the time constraint of the high school match starting. When we first started, we had kids that were afraid of going to tournaments. After going to a couple of these, they had the confidence to start tournament play. This is just our way of trying to work around some people’s concern about cost.

Brent