Knowing When You Made a Mistake Attending a Youth Wrestling Tournament
Attending a youth wrestling tournament is more than just an investment of money. It’s also an investment of time, emotional energy, and memories. Wasting money is bad, but wasting time, emotional energy and memories is even worse.
Therefore, when evaluating the experience of your child participating in a youth wrestling tournament these are the factors I see as the most important criteria.
- Was there a better use of time? Going to a tournament for 6 hours and getting two matches is not a good use of time. If you get to weigh-ins at 7 am and the tournament is not over until after 1 pm and your child only wrestles twice, you made a mistake. A better use of time is taking your child to a good technique camp or getting a private coaching session with video review.
- Was your child grossly over matched? If your child goes 2 and out at a tournament and was pinned in the first period both times you made a mistake. Going 2 and out by losing two competitive matches is one thing. Your child can learn and grow from this type of experience. On the other hand, your child can’t learn and grow from being beat with two quick pins.
- Was your child grossly under matched? If your child blows through the competition by pinning and tech falling everyone with ease, you made a mistake. Winning too many easy matches can create bad habits and hurt a wrestler’s long term growth. More than likely, you should have bumped your child up a weight or age group.
- Were the facilities filthy or were there other operational failures? No or poor skin checks, dirty mats, and filthy bathrooms are all reasons to believe that going to that tournament was a mistake. Hygiene in wrestling is critical and if tournament directors can’t get this right they don’t deserve the support of the wrestling community.