Clarkmom, I'm very sorry to hear that you were disappointed in our tournament. We had a lot of people tell us yesterday how good it was, how well it was run, and that they would be back again next year. We had more of the same today when we attended the Burlington tournament. I would like to address some of the complaints that you had directly. First, the medal situation was not because we didn't want to "put a little money into our tournament". We had almost 100 more wrestlers than we have had in past years. We also decided when we were bracketing that it was very important to us that each wrestler receive a medal for their efforts. Due to this decision and the larger number of wrestlers, we had many more brackets than we had anticipated. Since we had extended our deadline to Wednesday night to accommodate clubs unable to practice and take entries due to the weather, we did not have a true count of wrestlers and brackets until Thursday morning. We ordered stock medals from a trophy company in ElDorado, and picked them up Friday. Had I even anticipated that there would be a problem or complaint with the fact that our medals were different, I would have definitely considered trying to keep them more uniform across an age bracket or some other way. Most wrestlers are happy to have a medal, and I feel like it was more important that each wrestler got their own medal yesterday than what exactly they looked like. Secondly, we did not run out of 3rd place medals. If a wrestler that placed 3rd truly received a 4th place medal, I would like to have that person contact me so I can make arrangements to get them a 3rd place medal. I also wish I had been made aware of the fact that that happened so I could have taken care of it yesterday. I was at the head table most of the day and very accessible. Third, I'm not sure exactly who your youngest son is, so I can only guess from your post to the results from last night. If you are addressing the 12 & under 72 lbs. bracket, your son most definitely wrestled before 2 p.m. His first round he had a bye. The second round, he wrestled match number 43. On mat 4, they had 113 matches and were finished with all of their matches early enough for us to move matches from other mats to that mat. If this is not the bracket you are talking about, I apologize. Lastly, I would like to address the comment about the time the tournament was over. I believe you are mistaken about the time you left. We completed wrestling all matches by around 4 p.m. We then awarded team trophies and sportsmanship trophies. Friends of mine live an hour away, stayed for the presentation of the trophies and got home at 5:15 p.m.
We are a club that is trying to build up a nice tournament for wrestlers and their families to come to. Again I will say that we had many, many compliments on our tournament yesterday and today. Given your feelings about our tournament and how it was run, I think I would consider skipping it next year.
