I think the best benefit of the venue change was allowing each tournament to operate on four mats. This made the schedule much better for fans, wrestlers, coaches, workers, and all involved.

The later start in the morning and earlier finish in the evening was a big plus. Have you ever attended a state volleyball or basketball event. You aren't in the facility from 6 a.m until 11 p.m., only to turn around and repeat the process the next day. The length of our tournaments can be a negative factor to our efforts to creat a larger fan base. Fans flock to watch their local school play in these tournaments.

I think a more fan-friendly schedule was made possible by moving to four mats per class, which only works with three venues.

The finals only lasted about two-plus hours, as opposed to the 4-5-6A finals in Wichita lasting four hours.

While there may be a few minor adjustments to be made in Salina, I think they are minor and easily fixable. The overall experience was much better, but that is just my opinion. I now know why 321A people have always loved their state tournament and would put up a fight when anyone mentioned moving it.

I doubt overall attendance was lessened, despite the claim that there were too many empty seats in Salina. Maybe this just allowed us to feel more able to spread out comfortably to view the wrestling, which was action-packed as always. I would be interested in seeing overall attendance numbers from Wichita and Salina combined to compare to past years. I bet it adds up to more fans attending the state wrestling tournaments altogether. I will try to check on that.

At any rate, this is great discussion on the topic.

I just know that I personally enjoyed the state tournament this year more than ever before and think the venue change had a lot to do with that.