I would like to thank all the School Officials, Mat Officials, Pairers, Table Workers, Concession Workers and everyone else that helped us put on this tournament. Except for the length of the tournament I feel things went well. The pauses in wrestling on a few mats at the end of the day was due to us calling wrestlers up and we had to wait a specific time to scratch them. When we would have 3 or 4 in a row then we would get open mats.

I myself have been in wrestling for over 20 years but this was the first time I had ever been to a Freestyle/Greco Tournament. None of my table workers had been to one either, we have ran tournaments before but always folkstyle. The only helpers with our tournament that had seen this style before is the Mat Officials, Pairers and Gonzo. (I was proud of how my workers did being inexperienced)

Rose Hill is a 4A school and we have 5 mats, I do not know too many schools that have more mats than that. I would like to thank Derby for lending us a mat in the last second when another school had promised us one and then backed out. Yes we have two gyms and could have had 3 more mats in there but we were going on estimates from experienced people including the state board members telling us how many kids would be there. I was told that last year 5 mats were used and they would recommend us using 6 this year.

Many of you have said that the numbers were up and we should have used the other gym. How was I supposed to know the numbers would be up that much when registrations don’t end until Friday night at 3:00 pm.? It would be hard to add mats, officials, and table workers over night. The information on the tournament was on the web for a month, yet Monday morning I had 12 people signed up. As of Wednesday evening I had 130 people registered. We were sweating wondering if it was even worth putting this tournament on, much less expanding?

The way things are set up now I don’t see you doing anything else but guessing on how many are going to show up and that makes it hard to prepare a venue to run the tournament perfectly.

Thanks to everyone, the helpers, the wrestlers and parents. I had a good time but I was ready to collapse at the end. LOL

Coach John Terrell