Originally posted by VanFam7:
I see one of the problems is allowing too many wrestlers for the # of mats. Why do clubs do this? Yes, you might make more money that day, but in the long run it will hurt your numbers. We have been to tournaments in the past with 500 or so wrestlers and only 6 mats. Some of them last EIGHT HOURS! Some times we've had a 3-4 hour wait for our last matches. If they had a split format they could accomodate the same number of wrestlers with less congestion in the gym. There are also safety/fire code issues to think about. I vote for split format tournaments.
Split tournaments won't help if directors cannot control their greed to make a buck. As you said, the root cause of these problems are tournament directors not limiting the entries to a reasonable level. We had the same problems, for other reasons, back during the late 80's and as a result ran a lot of people off from this sport. The question is, will todays tournament directors take "constructive" criticism and do the right thing for the sport as a whole, or instead run a whole new generation away?
