Nathan Fowler, Derby Wrestling Club wins School Boy 265 class with first period pins. KS wrestlers overall appear to be doing well. Expect more to medal Sunday.

Here are the overall results in a faster format than Track Wrestling. Congrats to all the finishers it was a very long weekend.

http://www.themat.com/section.php?section_id=4&page=results

Owen Eck, Bantam 45, ate the 2 and BBQ meal.
Mark BUtcher, Intermediate 65, took 7th. Was winning both matches that he lost, then was caught and pinned.
Jason Henschel, Novice 70, went 1-2. Second loss occurred while winning 9-2.
Alek Martin, Novice 70, went 4-2, and missed AA status by one match, which he was winning late, but gave up some questionable back points and lost.
Zach Eck, schooboy 84, went 2-2, losing a tight match that put him out.
Anthony Capul, Schoolboy 160, made the finals. Wrestled the Minnesota kid that pinned him at Elementary duals last year. After several near takedowns on the edge of the mat, he succumbed 2-1. Great match. Worn out for his challenge match 10 minutes later, which he was winning 4-3, he gets caught and pinned, and takes 3rd.

The story for the weekend was not finishing. Way too many leads that evaporated into losses by pins. Great showing by the boys, and great lessons learned. What a great venue, great competition, and atmosphere. Great officiating crews. Like the way they verbalized what they were seeing. I assume they were college refs, as it sounded just like what you hear at the NCAA's..........

Ref verbalizing...out loud...what they were seeing... then you said coaches like that... great to hear..I will continue doing just that.

Congrats to the Brawler Team...great kids...great coaches...classy organization

There are some very good refs that don't verbalize around here, that I think would be even better if they did verbalize it. Seems like there are different ideas of what "two" is, sometimes, and when a kid is on his hips, fighting off a leg attack, and he hears "two", he can belly down instead of giving up back points without even knowing it......

I hadn't been to Iowa Folkstyle Nationals for 5 or 6 years, and was reminded about how cool and tough of a tourney it is. I know different tourneys will cherry pick a bracket or two that is tougher than the others, but as an example, two kids that were finalists at the Kickoff and the Tulsa Nationals,at 8u 67 lbs, took 4th and 7th at Iowa this weekend at 8u 65 lbs.

No doubt our kids made themselves better by participating, win or lose.......

Def a great venue for it. 26 full mats, plenty of seating, lots of food places to eat. Being able to watch the freestyle & greco oly trials was neat for those who were looking to the next level in wrestling. Wished we'd gone before now. Nate said he wanted to come back when he gets in HS, so maybe again in 2 years.

What I noticed about the refs at least on the mats we were viewing was that they were not so quick to give back points and were stingy at times giving 2 points rather than a 3. I liked that they didn't allow much in the way of stalling. They would break'em up and return to the middle if they got hung up for more than 20 seconds. That was cool.

What I didn't care for was getting there at 7am to weigh in and then not having a match till 5pm. We finished up our last match at 9PM that was a super long day for any athlete. After such a long day most kids start to lose interest no matter how much they like wrestling. We should have weighed in around 11am to 12pm and that would have been a lot better in my opinion. They also didn't have a bracket built for us till 10 min before they started at 2:30pm. Didn't make much sense to me.