This one hits close to home, because that is the exact tourney we ran yesterday. I agree that logistically it was tough, but the exact reason we did it was to grow the sport. A lot of smaller schools can’t always send their girls and boys to different tourneys all over the place. We thought we would give it a try to allow them in the same tourney. It didn’t work that great, so we will probably not do that again. I will say that when teams only send one coach to coach 10 or more kids, it wouldn’t matter if you have 5 mats in one gym. Having to wait for coaches to get to mats to coach adds a lot of time to a tourney. 3-5 mins several times over the course of a day adds up to an extra hour of tourney times.
As far as money grabs go, by the time you pay for officials, team trophies, medals for Varsity, JV, and Girls, coaches room food, the list goes on, you barely break even. Add in the fact that several teams won’t even end up paying their team entry fees, you actually lose money.
Everybody has a better way to do a tourney, but few will actually do it. Those same everybodys are always talking about “growing the sport” but when someone is actually trying to do it, it’s not the right way or convenient enough.
We will keep doing our tourney the best we can and will evolve each year. If a tournament doesn’t fit a team’s expectations or time requirements, you can always choose another to go to.
Asking the WIAA to step in and govern how tournaments should run is like asking the government to spend our tax money wisely. Has the WIAA improved the way the Mat Classic over the years? I’m not sure it has.
Matt Hoover