TNAAU STATE TOURNAMENT in COOKEVILLE

[TeamTN]

The mats: the ones used that had the seamless cover velcroed to the mat padding were the same ones that they used at the Liberty Nationals and Brute Nationals. The same mats that are used in international competition and that are in the Olympic Traning center. I did see one time during the PM session when the cover was pulled back to fix the padding. DId not take long to fix, few minutes. Good thinking and quick action by the Ref at the table and a few volunteers.

 

Showcasing the finals was very important to the host and the board. I am sure the process will be improved. The award room was very organized and nice. There is always a flow challeneg when it comes to the presentations. The ladies and Eric Davis did a good job and should also be Thanked (I faied to do so in an earlier post, Thank You Eric). First plan was to run te 1-2 and 3-4 at the same time on 14 mats (7 per weight class). the change was made, I believe, when coaches may have trouble covering all the mats at one time.

 

I also would like to see, if possible, a big screen or two, that displays the dashboard that Track offers.

[sportsfan93]

I think all in all that this was tremendously better than last year. Great job! I have a few suggestions. Allow the same number of coaches for jr and ms events. Some teams have different coaches for those age groups. We were not able to get all our coaches in while another team was. It needs to be equal for all. They used all their passes earlier and then got more. We had one coach sitting in the stands knowing that they were given extra passes. I saw it. Also, the viewing of the back mats was very difficult. The flow of the tournament was awesome until finals. While the mats were closed, we waited a very long time for finals knowing we had a long drive home. I ended up pulling in at home at 3:30 a.m. without stopping to eat, but instead just gas and go. While 20 matches were finished with only 3 mats running. I would love to see the awards of 1 division done all at one time with all the kids. The hospitality was good but if your gonna make a tournament last until 9:30, please have some food after 3:30. I don't eat a lot and I don't abuse hospitality, but the regionals and states hospitality was very poorly run for that type event. The food was good, just out way to early. You have to remember that the coaches and the kids make this event the success is was and without us, you have no tournament. I have no problem paying for parking. But when you drive 3 hrs +, pay to park, paying for food items (if they don't run out) shouldn't happen, especially when your standing around 2 hrs to wait on a finals match. Again, these are just some suggestions, but it was much much better than last year.

[pantheon]

I can't complain. Since I stayed for the region all-star duals, I had a hotel room not far away. Some good points have been raised, but the perfect facility is likely beyond TNAAU's purse. Really impressed how well the rounds flowed. I'm sure we'll see improvements year-to-year.

[ALman]

Lost Camera. We lost our camera at the tournament Saturday. It was a Sony NEX 5N with an extra lens. If anyone found it please let me know. The camera is valuable, but the pictures are irreplaceable. We are offering a $100.00 reward. Any coaches willing to send an email out to their parents would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for any help. Email me at sfitires@yahoo.com.

[durdon]

This was also my 5th year in TNAAU wrestling and I have to say that I am incredibly impressed by what a great job TNAAU has done over the past 5 years growing the sport during that time and I say this from the perspective of a dad with an average wrestler who has had very little interaction with the people that run TNAAU or any of the main influencers in the sport.

 

As far as this particular state tournament, here are my thoughts:

 

THE VENUE: The good thing about this venue was that it is large enough to hold this size event, which wasn’t the case with the venue last year. There was plenty of parking, easy to get to and centrally located for the vast majority of wrestlers in TNAAU. If it wasn’t for 2 factors I would say lock this venue up for the next 5 years for the state tournament. Those issues being the fact there were no stands on the back side of the arena and the 3^rd row of mats were way to far away to see from the stands. The second issue was the dust. I am up at 4:30am because my eyes are killing me 2 days later and I still taste dust in my mouth. The biggest advantage of this venue was that it kept the parents off the floor, which I am sure led to a lot of complaints but at event this size when it means this much to the kids and parents, it really is best if we can keep the parents off the floor which this venue allowed you do. If this venue is chosen again next year there is enough room to run 7 mats across the front row and 7 across the 2^nd row and then eliminate the entire back row. That will fix the distance issue from the stands

In many ways this was the perfect venue for event this sized other than 2 major negatives. Personally, my vote would be to find another comparable venue but that is just because the dust really bothered me.

Oh on the volume, the speakers weren’t to loud in the venue at all, the problem was that the one set of speakers near mat 1 were way to close to the stands and they blasted those 3 sections of stands way to loud. If that speaker stand had been moved back to the 2^nd row of mats then the volume for the people in the stands in those sections would have been perfect.

 

 

The Matches:

You guys did a really good job running this meet considering that this was by far the largest tournament that you have put together.

BUT and this is a big but Both session were WAY to long. Now that you have experience running a tournament of this size I am sure you will be able to cut down on the length of the 2 sessions next year but I really think that the format needs to change to speed things up. Combining Juniors and Middle School together is a mistake as those are the 2 longest sessions. My suggestion would be run each age group as its own session. The vast majority of parents and I would say over 85% are there for one child. If we can get that kid in and out of the parking lot with medals and t-shirt in 3 hours then that will dramatically lesson the shear amount of people in the venue at one time and allow the parents of kids that are actually wrestling to get the plum seats. If we can achieve a sub 3 hour time span for a kids involvement in wrestling tourney then we are going to start attracting more Grandparents and other relatives to wrestling tourneys which means more money that can be generated at the tourneys and more involvement by the families so our return rate on kids coming back to the sport next year will be higher…

 

The Officiating:

I am sure my coach disagrees but I really thought that the officiating was spectacular this year. Very professional and very well managed. The officiating in the Nashville, and Chattanooga area to me is as good as you are going to find in the sport now.

 

The Seeding:

I posted some ideas I had about seeding before the tourney but I have to say in the 15 or so brackets that I follow including my own son’s bracket

you guys did an incredible job. Every bracket that I looked at was fair and balanced. No matter the format that you chose to go with next year on how to seed whether it award points for the top 100 & region or use Track, the bottom-line is that now that we are getting depth in our brackets in TN that every year if we want to balance out the brackets then it is going to come down to an actual seeding committee as you guys found out Friday night. Next year I would suggest that you do the seeding the Sunday after regions and not wait until late Friday night. Mostly because the way Ga does it and they release their brackets a week to 2 weeks in advance is just darn cool and really builds a ton of excitement. Who cares if the kid ends up not signing up or not making weight. The only kids that aren’t going to show are going to be kids at the bottom of the seeding chart and those forfeits are going to matter, and really how many kids aren’t going to make weight… Even with waiting till after weigh in’s to do the brackets we still had a number of forfeits Saturday so waiting to bracket didn’t help at all.

 

AWARDS:

The people in the room handing out medals did a great job and worked very hard the entire day. The room itself was just too small to handle the volume of people that wanted to see the kids on the medal stand and it was hard to get pictures of the boys. If this venue is chosen again next year then another area need to be chosen for the awards area that has more room. Maybe on the floor in back corner facing the stands so that parents could get pictures from the stands. I don’t know that I ever been to a tourney even the major national ones were the awards ceremony has been really that great, so if you have to keep it in that small room so be it.

 

Championship Matches:

It was great in theory but Yeah it really didn’t work out so well. Making all of the kids wait until all the matches were done and then doing them all at once was just lame. The wait was to long and then their wasn’t that much excitement because you ran them all at once. I really like the idea of just moving the Championship match to the center match and running it there with an announcer calling the entire match. I missed about half of the finals I wanted to see and this would have allowed me to see them all.

 

True 2^nd:

Has to happen next year. You were ready to implement it this year logistically but if you run it at all of the top 100 then I think that next you we will be able to run it at state without issue.

 

MAT SIDE CLOCKS

No matter what the expense is you have to buy the large stand up Mat side clocks. It really really hurt the tournament not having them. Now that the state is hosting tournaments of this size there are an absolute must.

Edited March 12, 2013 by durdon

[cbg]

Is there a chance that the TSSAA will follow the lead of the Ohio High School Athletic Association and sponsor a middle school/junior high state wrestling tournament? Ohio does a 1 class junior high state wrestling championship and allows school teams, club teams and individuals to enter the tournament. IMO, the T$$AA will do anything for a few bucks and I mean anything.

[PUMMELKING]

Not much hope. They state they do not want anything to go beyond a regional for Middle School. Even tho other sports like Basketball can go beyond a Regional...

 

Is there a chance that the TSSAA will follow the lead of the Ohio High School Athletic Association and sponsor a middle school/junior high state wrestling tournament? Ohio does a 1 class junior high state wrestling championship and allows school teams, club teams and individuals to enter the tournament. IMO, the T$$AA will do anything for a few bucks and I mean anything.

[TO338]

Lost Camera. We lost our camera at the tournament Saturday. It was a Sony NEX 5N with an extra lens. If anyone found it please let me know. The camera is valuable, but the pictures are irreplaceable. We are offering a $100.00 reward. Any coaches willing to send an email out to their parents would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for any help. Email me at sfitires@yahoo.com.

 

Bump. ^^^

[Sommers]

Impressive, Durdon!

 

Much more involvement & support today! It's been a work in progress...

 

Go back 10-12 years & I know you'd love what has been done, i. e., too few mats + too many moments of dead time, hense 12-2 am finals. Frustration for all!!!