Originally Posted By: Chief Renegade
Originally Posted By: ksuwrestling2
Chief, those numbers are miss leading. Even you have to admit wrestling was more popular in the 80s. Back in the good old days whole towns would show up to watch a tournament or meet.


Steve, The numbers are what they are. The sport is growing. The top tournaments have awesome crowds. One issue that is hurting our fan participation is the limit of scheduling points inposed by KSHSAA. This has led to the decline of individual duals. They need to add points specifically for duals to bring together the local fans.

Speak for yourself! Many of the schools in south central Kansas have as many or more duals as they ever did. In addition, the duals I attend are, more often than not, well attended with enthusiastic crowds.
While attendance at "top tournaments", that's only about 4 tournaments may be up, the attendance at the rest of the tournaments continues to decline. I attribute that decline to two main factors. 1. The thought of youth coaches and parents that their kids need to be wrestling somewhere EVERY Saturday of the season and the further from home the better. In years past, even when kids were wrestling the same day as their high school they often could make it home in time to watch, what should be their mentors, wrestle. If your youth wrestler is wrestling in BFE every Saturday then he isn't going to see much high school wrestling. 2. The first and foremost reason IMO for tournament attendance decline is tournaments are not run in such a manner so as to encourage attendance by fans. How many tournaments receive advance advertising or publicity today? Even if they do, are firm session start times, particularly for the finals, posted or adhered to? With today's computer programs high school tournaments run much more predictably so session times should be publicized and barring weather should be run per that schedule. Also, if you are going to have real time results online don't expect people to show up in greater numbers.
As usual, people are asking KSHAA to force them to do what is best for the sport as a whole. If you want more duals, then simply schedule more duals!