Seems like there is an aweful lot of worry about the quality of mat time these kids are getting at novice tournaments. What a great problem to have. the competition is too good for the novice wrestler! Who is really gaining more here? The kid that should be wrestling Open tournaments but is at the novice to get easy medals? Or is it the true novice wrestler that has the opportunity to wrestle the Open wrestler? Good mat time is good mat time, right? The way i see it,the goal of the season up to sub-district is to get ready for the qualifying tournaments at the end, not collect hardware. how better to get ready then to wrestle above your level? if the kid is going to go for the glory at the end of the season, they are going to be facing these kids anyway, right? What ever happened to no novice tournaments? When i wrestled kids wrestling there was just Saturday wrestling & you got beat until you developed the skills to win. What a glorious day that was when you finally picked the thorn that had been in your side all season or sometimes multiple seasons & beat the kid that use to kill you on the mat. Watch your novice kid that competes in Open tournaments compared to the novice kid that competed in novice tournaments. At the end of the day the results speak for themselves.