This was a great experience for our boys/girl.  I would like to thank all the coaches, team moms, and parents for making this happen.  

We are already looking forward to next year.  I'm just wondering if there is anything we can do as a state to build the best teams possible?  IMO we should build from the bottom up.  If a kid is a youth wrestler leave him/her with the youth team.  There is a bigger pool of parents willing to travel with a Middle School kids than youth kids.   

In no way is this a complaint just trying to start conversation about a great tournament and ways to improve it for our future teams.

Good question. Actually heard the same from a few others. And down the road we will definitely go that route. At this point we are viewing it this way:

1) we are just getting to the point of being competitive on the ms level and pulling our ms state champs away from that team will hurt that team and potentially leave holes in the lineup

2) pulling these kids down to the youth team would limit some of the opportunity for some of the youth kids to participate in an event like this

For now our goal is to get as many kids as possible at these national events and on the mat with this tough competition. I think our ramp up period will be much quicker with these youth kids. We showed this weekend that there are already a number of kids that can hang with anyone.

I think it should be up to the kids wrestling. If they place top 4 they can't wrestle youth state but we would consider making them wrestle on the youth team doesn't make since to me. From the looks of it we have the youth parents willing to travel and not middle school. Middle school took 4 forfiets at nationals. If you have a 8th grader that is ready to compete at high school and a spot open on Varsity you don't say well let's leave him down to help the middle school compete. The 8th grader goes to Varsity and the middle school finds someone else to fill that spot. Yes it hurts the middle school a little but it leaves it open for another kid to wrestle. The kids that filled those spots deserved them the wrestle tough and competed well. I believe they all went to state and at least 3 placed.