Things went very smoothly in my opinion. Big thanks to the guys that put it all together, and I won't attempt to name them all for fear of forgetting someone.

For those of you that want to get involved, but aren't sure if your help is needed, trust me, IT IS NEEDED!! There are always things that can be delegated out to make life easier on guys like Bilby for this event, Dal Eck and James Cook for the Heartland dual event, and of course Schoolboy duals, Cadet duals, Junior duals...... Get involved, and you'll see that these are great opportunities to get to know some other wrestling families from across the state.

I appreciate all the hard work that goes in to putting a team together. The only thing I don't understand is why we send kids down there on teams but won't let the other KS teams wrestle each other. They do a double forfeit. If I was sending my wrestler down with hopes of getting 9 matches in and he only gets 7 or less depending on forfeits from other teams as well, it does not make much sense. I saw this happened last year as well. These kids need the good competition and some of the best may be on another KS team. I took a lot of crap from people for letting my kid wrestle for another team, but financially I would rather him get the 20-30% more mat time.

Can someone explain the rationale behind this?

Eric Coates

I am in agreement with Eric.. was expecting 7-9 matches and they got 4. There were some hefty brackets at Lawrence this weekend and would had been $160 cheaper. My son did have a blast on Sunday at the dual but the venue that resembled a middle school gym and the amount of matches he received on Saturday left both of us underwhelmed.. I'm just glad I didn't add on the extra cost of traveling with.

I do appreciate those that helped put this together as the effort was over the top and the communication was second to none.

I'm not sure the reasons, I would support wrestling the ks kids also. It is something we can bring up next year.

I also believe that Kansas kids should wrestle each other. It doesn't make sense to double forfeit. The more matches the better. I've noticed that other states wrestle each other and hopefully this changes in the near future.

I understand both sides of the coin on the issue. I agree we should wrestle each other to a point. The other states though are already done with their state series and basically done wrestling for the season as we are not. Wrestling each other with state still in our future could lead to accidental injuries that could affect the outcome of the state championships. I would say we would only wrestle each other IF the standing are close to call at a dual tournament such as the Southern Plains.

Any time you step on the mat an injury could occur. By the looks of the team results, I would there is slightly more of a chance of getting injured from a non Kansas team.

I understand the thoughts & concerns about injuries & stuff along with wanting more matches but I believe rather than us focusing on getting more matches by simply wrestling our own, who for the most part probably already have that opportunity in many, but not all instances, on many weekends already right here in Kansas. I realize this is not exactly their normal age & weight groups in this competition, but still. I think the reason most kids want to participate in this is due to the high level of competition from kids in other states that they don't normally see or know. This is our kids time to shine and represent their State, not just their local Club team. This was advertised to be about 8 States bringing teams but only 1/2 that amount of states were present. Rather than getting additional matches by wrestling our own kids, why not see what it takes, or find out why these other States chose to not participate to see if we can get our kids matches from the other teams that were advertised to be there. I believe the teams that were discussed being there were teams from New Mexico, Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri, Texas, Kansas & Oklahoma. With a few of these teams not showing up there weren't even enough competitors for the Middle School division to compete both days! I would rather us try to get the other States to show up rather than have to wrestle ourselves. We can already do that most weekends right here at home, in my opinion. I realize the uniqueness of this competition being 1-6th grades that may not normally be in a bracket here under normal circumstances but I prefer the out of state competition as advertised over settling for instate simply for more mat time at an expensive & unique event.
Just my opinion!

Given that Kansas already hosts the Southern Plains FR/GR tournament in June and given that there was so much controversy surrounding the event this year re: non state sanctioned teams participating, despite the original understanding it was to be ALL state sanctioned teams and the original director of the tournament leaving half way through the lead up to the tourney etc etc.....Why doesn't Kansas seize this opportunity to go to USA wrestling and say we would also like to host this event, since we already have the other, and run it right ie garner more participation from the other southern plains states etc. Seems like a natural fit for our state to get a big regional tournament that has the added benefit of fixing the future iterations of an event that up to this point has been a bit of a debacle in each of its previous two years....just a thought