sugarbear wrote:Indyhart. Great post!
I really like several of the ideas on this topic. I have a son on the East Fairmont team and in the last two years we have hosted one home tournament, one or two tri/quads and a dual or two
The attendance for the evening weekday duals bring a lot of promotion for our youth clubs and middle school clubs. After our tri with North and Indy I asked my son who had several friends who had never been to a wrestling event in attendance what they said. The response went something like "that was the craziest atmosphere I ever seen in our gym". "Crazy intense" "when is the next one?" "I had no idea wrestling was so real". They didn't ask... why singlets or make the normal
Jokes that we have all heard to many times.
During that dual we had two youth programs and two middle school programs attending and it absolutely promotes the sport in our community. It's tough to think of adding matches tho, We have been beat to pieces this season with injuries. We had 5 starters out for WSAZ and travelled to Point tonight with that and maybe more missing. Fortunately we have several kids to fill in some and it is a great opportunity for them to step up and get some varsity matches.
I really like the idea of adding a weight allowance and using a 1/2 point weigh in for those events. The key to these duals is getting teams that have nearly full rosters and be competitive with one another. I'd love to see us return the favor Indy did for us and travel to them next season. I like the idea of wrestling the Parkersburg teams every year. I think for it to work, the duals need to be matches that generate interest and idk what the does to our states smaller programs.
I'm pretty sure there was a dual or two this year that had 3 maybe 4 matches total and the rest... forfeits. It's a long and grinding few months and I personnaly enjoy the dual matches over a bracketed tourney. The idea of the team competing together. That one 2nd year kid wrestles a two time state champion and can help the team win by not being majored or pinned. Victory achieved even when losing on the match scorecard.
I agree completely