We have traveled to many nationals tournaments. Coming from Wisconsin we were warned this tournament was poorly organized, but as we saw some top notch kids registering we thought we would try it out. I got to say this was the worst tournament we ever been to.
Wrestling was to start at 1 and my son had a bye. He didn't wrestle first match until 5:30 and the second match until 9:30. We finally left just after 11 pm. I'm no rocket scientist but why would someone try to run over 300 kids on 6 full mats for 4 minute periods and think the tournament will move along? Eventually they decided to open up another gym with four more mats, problem was now instead of being at the same mat all day as the tournament promised, you did know know what mat you were supposed to be on. They were wrestling part of a bracket in one gym and part in the other...we've been to other tournaments that have operated like this...but never one that didn't provide information as to where your match would be. If you tried to follow along on track wrestling that too was off. I saw one match get a FF because one kid was in the other gym where he was supposed to be at yet they moved the match without making an announcement. Despite the poor organization, table workers were impatient and lacked direction and leadership.
Towards the end of the day many wrestlers just left because of the extreme poor organization--these were kids that would have placed had they stayed. Many people just walked out!
You can call it a national tournament, but I would suspect much of the good competition won't be returning.
Even if Indy Nationals promised to make changes for next year's event I still don't think we will ever return. I can never recommend this tournament to my worst enemy.
