Mike:
If you read my post, you will notice that I said "sometimes unwilling" participation. While the vote is overwhelming at the state board level, I can assure you that there has been consideaable speaking out against the procedure at the district meeting level, and in my recollectionin the western division meeting that was held at Scott City about 4 years ago, there was enough grass roots opposition to the funding as it existed then that ther was a motion made to look into pulling out of Ks. kids and participating the Oklahoma AAU program. There have been several state board decisions made in the past (such as moving the birth date to qualify for the age groups to October from Jan.)
that were likely unanamous at the board level but certainly not at the rank and file level. No decision that is made in a group that big is ever going to be popular, but lets not fool ourselves-- if every folkstyle participant (parent) was given the option to pay the frestyle tarriff, for lack of a better word, or not, you wouldn't get nearly as much money as you do, and if a vote were taken of every member of usa wrestling Ks. instead of just the board,
I wonder if it would exist at the level that it does. I quit participating in Kids when an additional 2 dollars was added to the cost of our registration because the cadet program had mismanaged their budget the year before and they needed the funds to continue. If I recall correctly, there wasn't any popular, one-member-one vote determination of policy, It was a board decision. the fee was supposed to go back down when the emergency was rectified, but I never found out if it was or not as that was the last kids membership I ever paid for. I don't intend to beat this issue to death, because I love wrestling, and I firmly believe that every
chance should be given to every wrestler in every style, I just think that representing the funding decision to pay for one style by charging another is #1. wrong, and #2, a decision that was overwhlemingly reached by a very small number of board members, not every certified member of usa wrestling ks.