Im not saying that split tournaments are a bad thing, I am just stating some of the opinions that I have heard from others about the different issues with tournament formats. I have heard many parents get discouraged by both formats and have heard the following comments about non-split tournaments a lot of times. One parent came up to me last year during a tournament and was talking about the time spent in the gym waiting hours between matches to see their kid wrestle for 10 seconds either because he/she got pinned quickly or he/she pinned their opponent quickly. I can certainly understand that from both sides of the issue. Last year at the start of the year we would wait hours to watch my son wrestle and then get pinned in less than 30 seconds. In freestyle-greco we would wait for hours to see my son pin his opponent in 10 seconds. I can remember one tournament this summer where I actually told my son to not get the pin so quickly and work on his moves and technique a little bit and earn the tech-fall.

Anyway my earlier point is dead and all I am saying is that we need to try to keep the kids in the sport longer. If that means we accomodate parents and wrestlers alike by changing the formats of our tournaments to suit the desires of the mass public then we need to be willing to bend and make the necessary changes. I personally think that my family has become a wrestling family and we love to sit in the gym at a tournament all day watching all of the kids wrestle, not just our own.