You can see bad behavior from kids and parents in any Walmart checkout line. Every sport deals with poor sportsmanship, and with its high intensity and large numbers of kids and matches, wrestling probably has the highest potential for poor sportsmanship. That being said, the overwhelming majority of these kids are tremendous kids and great sports. For every thrown headgear you will see ten kids give each other hug each other after the match. For every opposing coach who has been bad to me or my son, there are fifty who have given heartfelt consoling or congratulations. For every opponent my son has had a bad experience with on the mat, there are many many more that he has become close friends with and has exchanged e-mail addresses and phone numbers with. Most of the parents in and around my sons weight are very nice people which we know and visit with at each tournament. They wish our son well and we their's.

I know there are incidents at most every tournament that are we see that are sickening. I too believe that we have to deal with these people and issues. I just think that sometimes on this forum we fail to recognize the good sportsmanship that for the majority prevails. Anyone reading this forum who is not familiar with kids wrestling would get the impression that a wrestling tournament is the worst possible thing to subject a kid to--full of bad officiating, coaching, parenting and children.

Again, I am not condoning the bad ones, just trying to recognize the good ones.

Good luck this weekend!