No I'm not looking for a punishment, just something a little more solid than just a rule of thumb. If we have such "GREAT" guidlines already set than "WHY" is there such confusion year after year.
The guidelines exist I don't have access to them at this time but what does it matter, when as this case proves people are going to ignore them. There isn't any confusion from year to year, but rather coaches/parents medal hunting. Regardless of how you word novice qualifications there will be wiggle room for people to abuse. That's why my personal novice guidelines are simple and as follows.... 1. If you have to ask yourself or others which class your wrestler belongs in, then your wrestler belongs in the Open class. 2. Once your wrestler competes in an Open class he/she is no longer eligible for Novice tournaments.
I don't believe for one minute, for the most part, that parents or coaches are trying to find "loopholes" to keep their kids in novice. I have seen cases of it being done, but I can only think of 1 maybe 2 in the 5 years I've been around and it seemed to be more of a parent thing than a coach.
Well I've been around for as long as there have been novice tournaments and the ONLY reason I have seen for misapplication of the guidelines was coaches/parents abusing the system. I will grant you, it may have been parents, but who knows if that is a parent or coach on the mat on Sundays? Unfortunately, good people like yourself fall into that trap of blaming the guidelines instead of letting the blame fall where it belongs, with the violators. This thread is a perfect example, look at all that praised the parent involved simply because he came forward. Sorry, I don't believe for a second that this case in point was some simple mixup.
You tell me what club holds a tournament "not" to make money? It's not up to the tournament director to do an investigation on each entry to make sure that there isn't a advanced wrestler wrestling novice.
Of course they should make money. The key word in my previous post was "greedy". My point was, when you deliberately run the age groups for open and novice in opposite sessions you are only enviting this type of problem. I believe it is impossible to determine prior to the tournament if a kid is a legit novice so again we come back to the honor system. As I have pointed out, some people have no honor!
