Haven't heard much about the youth regionals this past weekend. Thought I would give some kudos to the folks at Walton. Northern KY usually has some pretty good numbers show up for youth. I'm not sure what the numbers were this weekend, but that was a well run tournament. First session finished early and the second session was finished in no time. Officiating was good (high school kids with a few certified officials to oversee) and I didn't notice too many table issues. Overall a great event. Oh yeah, some great, great wrestling as well. There are some good kids up this way.

I also thought it ran really smooth. The table I worked had some issues between refs and coaches, but that's going to happen no matter where you go or who is running the tournament. Especially at the youth level where they allow kids to ref. It's just too easy for coaches or parent/coaches to intimidate them into submission. I felt sorry for the kid who started out reffing my table. He's a great kid, but was verbally battered so horribly that he was sent off the mat crying. I understand that there were maybe some questionable calls being made, but that's going to happen if we allow young kids to ref our matches. Therefore we are going to either have to suck it up as a bad call and let it go or stop allowing kids to ref at our tournaments. We just can't continue to allow coaches and/or parents to overpower these kids if we are going to allow them to ref our matches.