So, I'm tying to plan my wrestling calender for my novice wrestler. I'm not happy with some of the directors decisions to have Sunday tournaments.

David Stilwell
Christian

You must be new......most novice tournaments have always been on Sunday. Too much congestion putting them in with open tournaments.

Wrestling is in the bible, so you can do it on Sunday.....

While it's true they have mostly been on Sundays. It is incorrect that they cause congestion on Saturdays. What causes congestion is two-fold, tournament directors who get greedy and take more entries than their facilities can handle and not running the novice brackets in the same session as the corresponding open bracket for that particular age group. In other words allowing an 8U to wrestle novice in the morning session and then 8U open in the afternoon. Again, this is done out of greed in order to try to double up on as many entries as possible.

I concur.

So if you are at a tournament on Sunday, when do you go to church?

Not new, 3rd year with one of my kids wrestling as a novice. The youngest is 5 as of June and still very novice. I know we have less chances this year then the last 2.

I'm not against wrestling I am against missing church, ever. If you're not a church going Christian then this won't affect you. If you are, then it makes choose novice wrestling or church. Any one that is new to the sport may see less oppertunity.

Saturday, Sunday evening, Wednesday evening. A few of the larger tournaments, granted not novice, even have a service on the mat Sunday morning before wrestling gets started.

I was pastoring a church when my son started wrestling. His first tournament was Emporia Tournament of Champions! He went 0-2 and got hammered. He was a tough little guy that never quit and is now wrestling in college.

I would pick a few smaller saturday tournaments and enjoy the time with your son and then worship on Sunday if that is your families practice.

Wrestling is the Biblical sport!

I agree, back in the day. Especially with the 6U crowd - almost all are novice. Some just have a little better instinct for the sport at that age. We only wrestled open tournaments the first year our son wrestled as a 6U. The second year he wrestled 6U, we did do one novice tourney, but he bumped up to 8U for that one.

Picking the smaller open Saturday tourneys would be a good option if you didn't want to wrestle on Sundays.

6 and under novice? All kids 6 and under are novice in my opinion. If someone is new to the sport and they are looking for 6 and under novice, then that seems ridiculous. In my opinion, there should not even be such a thing. 8 and under, yes. JMO

There are kids out there that are in there 3rd year of wrestling by the time they are at the top of 6U...
Novice is not an age it is a level of experience.
I also know kids that are top of 8 and have wrestled for 3 years that I think should still wrestle novice and would still only have average success.

At that age its about making kids grow a passion for the sport and I think its the parents and coaches job to put their wrestlers in a position to have to strive to find success, where ever that maybe!

As for the greed comment...
as I am sure it does exisit there is also things that play into making that decission.

The amount of revenue that is needed to be generated can over shadow the amount of gym or mat space that is available.
and sometimes we just want the "novice" to be in the spot light. Let them be the center of attention not "the 3X and 4X state champions wrestling down on mat 2!!"

You know we have more novice kids this year then we have ever had before. And our reasoning behind splitting our novice from our King of the Ring tournament was to let them be the center of attention and not just lost in the crowd. We HOPE to break even on our novice tournament but even if we dont... Its a worth while investment into our future!

There are kids out there that are in there 3rd year of wrestling by the time they are at the top of 6U...
Novice is not an age it is a level of experience.
I also know kids that are top of 8 and have wrestled for 3 years that I think should still wrestle novice and would still only have average success.

BLT, my point is as a whole these kids are all novice in the 6 and under. One parent may have too much pride to put his kid in novice, another parent may want to win no matter what and put his kid in novice just to win every tourny, especially if it has good returns. So the point is in the 6 and under put them all in the open, because only one kid is going to win whether it is open or novice. How do parents or coaches decide? if the kid can do the half nelson, then he is not considered novice? Lets' be realistic.

Well Tyson we will just have to agree to disagree...

Novice at 6U does cover the majority of the kids but IMO there are kids that are way beyond thats status even while in the 6U division. I think we should try to accommodate both levels of experience and I think it is very obvious to coaches and parents what level they should have their kid wrestling at.
Yes there are the medal hunters out there but they will fall behind the curve in due time!

Heck some people in our sport think we should do away with novice all together. "Throw them in the deep end, thats how I learned to swim"

Success builds confidence, and confidence builds passion
Heck, I dont mind throwing some kids in the deep end, just dont want there to be a bunch of sharks as well.

6U Novice, 6U open, I think both serve an excellent purpose in building the passion of our future wrestlers!

ICTdad...
Im sorry, I didnt mean to Hijack your thread!

When Jonny was starting in kids wrestling I knew very little about the "Youth Wrestling" Community and was also not very involved with the club. We went for 2 years every practice every weekend if he wanted of course, and that poor boy never won a match, not one for 2 years! On the 3rd year I got involved and took the club over and found this website and then I learned about novice tournaments. Everyone said "well technically this is Jonny's 3rd year and he can't go" Well I took him anyway.

Now my thought at this point was my kid sucks something awful! (and still he LOVES it) But hes getting stomped so fast at opens, he ain't learning hes just losing. Maybe an even field is what he needs to grow to understand the sport. We went to 3 novice events and placed in 2 and won the 3rd. Now hes getting hardware and WRESTLING. Now back to the dog fights where we win some and lose some. Now hear we are 7 years later 10 years old 2 State titles, some National championships etc... Still loves this sport with everything he has. If it had not been for those Novice tournaments for both of us to use as a LEARNING tool I really think this story would ended long ago. Without any success to nurture an athlete even small successes they are not going to continue in any sport.

Its very, very necessary to have these novice events. Kids clubs use their events to earn money for their clubs. The problem is scheduling, we have so many events in Kansas, kids clubs are Sunday wrestling so that they can have good turnouts and numbers to raise money. We need a group of people from all districts to work together to create some sort of committee to work within clubs and districts to optimize our season and their money by working together on scheduling these tournaments. I think that would really help.

I totally agree Jon...
And even in the scheduling process there are clubs at can combine 2 small tournaments into one outstanding one!
Way more profitable for both clubs those decide to do this!
or
Find those clubs out there that is willing to be the labor force!
They work tables, help with set up, or whatever and in return make some extra $$$ for the club!

Alot of egos would have to get set aside but IMO it would improve our sport ALOT!

Jon, I am not saying that there should not be novice tournaments. i am saying that in the 6 and under class that there is very little difference between the novice and open, and I still stand by that.

Yeah I understand what your saying. But that which we consider a little difference is very different in a kids eyes. They view in "winning and losing" at that age and nothing a parent and or coach says really sinks in or changes that feeling. The bottom line is that all kids are different. My son is NOT a "natural athlete" neither was I. Everything seemed to come to him a little harder than others. He learned just as I did that the only thing that could bring him up to the competitive level he wanted was hard work. And to get to a point where they have the drive to put in that work, is the small successes and achievements. Consistent failure in a normal kid is just as poisonous as consistent winning. Have you ever seen a kid that's never been anything but dominant, get killed in a match for the first time. It just as easily sends a kid off the deep end and is probably ten times harder to come back from. The opportunity the novice programs give to kids is no different than having training wheels on your kids bike. Their going to fall anyway but every once in a while they make it a little farther than before.

And then they get a full ride to a NCAA D1 school and then dad gets to go to a far away county to watch him win gold in the Olympics! Awe perfect ain't it.

In regards to missing church, you don't have to be Catholic to go to Saturday night mass. I have been going to their church for many years with my wife. I believe it more about going then what church it is. There is a way to do both. Not trying to start something, just giving an option. And, I do not think all 6U's are the same, especially w/ our age groups. A kid who turns 7 in October is way older and more mature than a 5 year once February comes around and they are both 6U. Novice needs to be separate and expanded with a rookie division for JR High kids who have just discovered the sport, but are way behind compared to most kids in federation wrestling.

We had a problem with numbers in these 2 divisions last year - 6 & under and 14 & under.

The open 6 & under had only 33 sign up - very tough time making any brackets where kids could wrestle different kids, We had 128 6 & under novice signups.

Same problem in the 14 & under division we had 40 novice signups and 80 open signups. Can't make everybody happy.


33 and 40 kids in an age group you can not make enough pairings with the available weights.

Anyway - we had complaints both ways not enough kids in a bracket and also we had complaints that so and so is 3rd year.



JC Classic 2010 - Last year

6 & U 33 - Open sign ups (20.5%)
6 & U 128 - Novice sign ups (79.5%)
14 & U 80 - Open sign ups (66.7%)
14 & U 40 - Novice sign ups (33.3%)

It would be nice if the weekend started on Friday. I doubt if Novice tournaments will be moved to another day - at least for now.

John, stay away from my church, I don't want you organizing a union for the priests...........