The Big Tourney

The stars shone above when I left Saturday morning. The dark night brightened to blue and the stars faded as I drove. The horizon turned pink and orange until the sun decided to rise when I was most of the way to Locust Grove Middle School.

Middle School teams are a new phenomena to me and Charlottesville, but not in the areas around us. Ten teams showed up! There were 400 bouts listed on the bracket sheets (including bye's, but still impressive!). Three mats were set up in the gym and the cafeteria.

Brackets were set for 12 wrestlers. Each team could bring one scorer and non-scoring extras would be portioned out to teams to fill the remaining spots. My team is skewed heavily towards the lighter weights. Of the 17 wrestlers who have showed up in my room, 13 weigh between 82-115 lbs. Between sick kids, orchestra auditions, and limited openings I was able to get 9 kids registered for the tournament. I had three more available wrestlers I would have liked to have had spaces for (Four if you count the brand new kid without wrestling shoes).

Getting everyone organized and to the match was more of a hassle than I thought. I submitted my roster on Tuesday, but didn't hear who could go until Friday near noon. That's not a problem for larger programs who planned on bringing a full bus load of 20+ kids.

I didn't have a bus. I emailed on Tuesday to double check if a bus had been scheduled (I should have done it the week before, but life is busy). I was asked about when I'd need the bus, but there was no confirmation that the bus was ordered. I emailed again Thursday night when I heard nothing.

Friday, a little over an hour after I emailed all my parents "Here's who's going. There's no bus. Be there by 7:45 AM at the latest," I got a phone call saying, "Hey! We got you a bus. It can get there by 8:15 AM." I thanked them, but then asked them to cancel it. I didn't want to deal with contacting the bus to changes times and then send out conflicting information to all my families two hours after I'd set a plan.

Everyone made it without too much drama at least. One family came late, but the wrestler showed up just as I had my last wrestler weighing in. That gave me time to enjoy the hospitality room (which was high school quality!).

I was pretty tired by the time the tournament actually started. I'd woken up at 5:30 AM and then had to wrangle and manage middle school boys who'd forgotten shoes, singlets, headgear, and even a mouth guard.

When wrestling commenced I made a point that it was THEIR job to listen for their match numbers. I was going to be running from room to room and match to match. If they wanted to wrestle, they had better listen, report in, and let me know where they were if they wanted a coach. I managed to run back and forth to all the first round matches save one (This is where an assistant coach would come in handy).

In between rounds, I tried to resurrect an old tournament tradition: Card games.

When I was in HS we used to play BS between rounds. My coach was horrified some of us didn't know how to play "proper Blackjack" and told me how and when to split face cards. I introduced the kids to Love Letter: Batman and then I gave the Exploding Kittens box to a kid to teach the rest of them how to play, too.

The tournament was a great experience for the kids who made it. Everything had a much more official and grand air than anything they've seen so far. Everyone had at least one match they were competitive in, and a few scored wins. We came in dead last by points, so the only way we can move is up.

Results:
Top record - 2 and 2.
Kids with a win - 4
Kids injured/sick - 2 (both went 0-1 and then scratched).
Hospitality room - Amazing. I wish I'd been more hungry.

Depending on the weight spreads I may or may not do the same tournament next year. I wouldn't have even attempted it a year ago when the team was so small, but now we've got more options.