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Mar 2, 2015
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josh1234
Joined: Mar 2, 2015
Posts: 1
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*******
Last edited by josh1234 on Mar 3, 2015; edited 1 time in total
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Mar 2, 2015
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Caelknows
Joined: Mar 2, 2015
Posts: 34
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Sorry you did not enjoy the experience. As you continue to follow your son's career you may find that many tournaments with 250 less wrestlers will weigh in at 8:15 and you will find that your son does not take the mat till 11. You may even find yourself there until 530 and then face a 2 hr drive home. Boys took to the mats at the scheduled start time and were out the door by 3:30. There were 500 wrestlers who took the mat yesterday from 80 different clubs. Whether you are new to the sport or not, please be aware your words are construed as an attack on the efforts of a community that came together to put this on. Many others may instead have viewed this as a testament to the health of our sport.
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Mar 2, 2015
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HomeTeamFan
Joined: Apr 6, 2012
Posts: 51
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We had our kids there. And for over 500 kids I thought it went really smooth. All the fairport parents looked like they worked very well together.
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Mar 3, 2015
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thereptileguys
Joined: Apr 7, 2011
Posts: 264
Location: BROCKPORT |
I have heard nightmares have happened at other tournaments. But i left at 5 and had over an hour ride home . We came cause of there reputation for great tournaments. They just simply had to many per mat.
Last edited by thereptileguys on Mar 3, 2015; edited 2 times in total
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Mar 3, 2015
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omgomgomgomg
Joined: Dec 7, 2006
Posts: 76
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It is great to see so many kids wanting to wrestle and I don't think it would have been fair for Fairport to handle things any differently as they would have had to tell kids no you cannot wrestle. I think it is a lesson learned for next to year to set a limit. They did well for the amount of kids there. My issue arises from parents and coaches allowing wrestlers to sit a good 5 to 10 feet out onto a mat where wrestling is going on. That is just unsafe.
I am with thereptileguys here as it is, however, not appropriate to come on and say kids left by 3:30 as I watched matches go past 5 pm and I also had a long drive home.
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Mar 3, 2015
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Caelknows
Joined: Mar 2, 2015
Posts: 34
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Fair enough folks. Some were wrestling at 5. Some were out by 3:30. Not meant to be a nick pick type situation but rather a defense of the folks involved with the tourney. This is a forum where many come to read about wrestling and unfortunately it is rare that acknowledgement is offered when things go right at the youth level. Starting a thread to bash is simply misguided and honestly I can't figure out what the author wanted to gain from his time. If the hope was to turn people off to the tourney so folks wont come back next year then good for you I guess. A great opportunity for your kids to test themselves against the best before qualifiers will have fallen to the wayside. Highly doubt decisions were made about putting money first. If you know the folks in Fairport you know that is not the case. My own kids had a blast, saw new competition, and met new friends from all over the state.
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Mar 3, 2015
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Raider92
Joined: Nov 15, 2009
Posts: 156
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I appreciate and respect all feedback about our tournament. I first of all want to say that the Fairport Families involved in this event are just absolutely amazing people, we have a great group and an even better community of people who help make our tournament successful.
Over the four years we have had our tournament we have seen our numbers grow from 265, 305, 385 to 522 so we are doing something right. As with any business or event you need to learn and adjust. During the event we had to adjust and get things moving, canceling the weigh ins was the 100% correct decision because it allowed us to start wrestling at 9:32. We completed over 123 4 (some 5) man round robin brackets in 7:30 hours. I want to thank all the youth coaches and many of the families I know for their support and positive comments throughout the day. I honestly heard nothing but positives from everyone including and especially from the referees (who did a fantastic job).
As I said earlier in the post when running any event you have to adjust and learn. We made our in day adjustments and trust me we have learned for the future. We had originally set a limit of 400 wrestlers, but we allowed online and mail in registrations. We shut off the online as we reached the 400 limit. On Friday our tally with mail in and online we had just over 430 participants. Saturday the bracket committee meet and had all brackets completed by 3 pm, as we began to print we decided we better check our mail in registration address just in case we had some last minute out of town participants whose envelopes were postmarked by our deadline date. After checking the mail in box we found and additional 90+/- registrations forms, including almost 30 forms from one team. At that time we had a meeting with our board members, the decision was to either call these 90+/- families and tell them they could not wrestle or buck up and re-bracket the entire tournament and work our xxxxess of the next day to make the best of a difficult situation. Since we are all are in this for the kids (and certainly not the money) we decided to re-bracket the entire tournament and work our xxxxes off the next day. Our lesson learned is that next year we will have a 100% online registration tournament that we can control the numbers, we know that anymore than 420 wrestlers is just more than the tournament can handle effectively. Adjust and learn.......we have done both.....it's a lesson a lot of us learned on the mat during our wrestling days.....everyone always says wrestling teaches lessons that last a life time.....I have no doubt that is true and it is why I have my children involved in the sport.
When you think of our tournament please think of the amazing army of volunteers we have and what an awesome place our sport is in right now. I see a lot of comments on this forum about what is wrong with our sport. On Sunday March 1, 2015 in Fairport, NY I saw 522 young wrestlers wanting to be apart of our sport. And dozens of Fairport Families working their xxxxes off to make sure all the kids left with trophies and a smile on their face.
For the record I want to say that all of the proceeds of our tournament are being put into the Dollars for Scholars Program in Fairport to develop a scholarship for a graduating Fairport Wrestler who went through our youth program. Putting on events like this is about giving back to our community and I hope all of you (well I mean 420 of you) come back and support us next year at the 5th Annual Fairport Youth Wrestling Classic.
If anyone would rather have a personnel conversation with me instead of posting on an open forum my name is Rob Unger and I am the founder and President of Fairport Youth Wrestling, I can be reached at coachunger@gmail.com or call me at 585-739-2642. I always make myself available to others to talk about youth wrestling or wrestling in general.
Thank you again and as I always say to my wrestlers "You're Always A Champion When You Choose To Compete"
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Mar 3, 2015
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hemits
Joined: Mar 9, 2005
Posts: 394
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Fairport should be congradulated for taking on and what sounds like doing a overall good job. 522 kids with that many mats out at 5. Wow!
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Mar 4, 2015
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coachlaz
Joined: Mar 4, 2015
Posts: 35
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I have become friends with Coach Unger and other parents involved with the Fairport Youth Wrestling Club in recent months. On the day of the tournament, as the time was grinding and my wife was texting wondering when I was going to be home for the late afternoon family plans, I will admit to feeling frustrated. I may have even grumbled about it a little bit at the time. Anytime a large number of people are assembled for longer than expected, there are going to be complaints. The overextended family man in me definitely understands peoples' frustrations. In hindsight, I actually feel a bit of shame for having felt that way though. It has less to do with Coach Unger's response or my conversations with him and other parents afterwards than it does the recognition of the amount of effort it took to take a logistic nightmare and make the most of it. Overcoming obstacles and building character are essentially the backbone of our sport.
Let's take the positives and focus on those. Every parent and/or person affiliated with making that tournament go off, was kind, welcoming, and accommodating. These individuals took the time to re-bracket and make sure every person who registered by the deadline was included in the tournament. They also explained to all the coaches before the tournament that the post-marked registration had to be honored and that next year they would likely have to make changes to the registration format so this cluster-jam did not happen again. They basically owned the responsibility, honored the wrestlers, and already had a plan in place to prevent it from happening again. Hopefully, these coaches relayed this to the parents of their clubs. Sitting around a couple of extra hours is a small price to pay in order to prevent 122 young wrestlers from being told Sat evening that they can't wrestle tomorrow. It would totally gut me if I had to break that news to my son. More positives would include new competition and WOA officials. Also, not for nothing, but I am hard pressed to think of something I'd rather do than watch some extra wrestling. The trophies were beautiful. Every participant received one. By the time my son's bracket ended, and we got dressed and walked to the trophy room, the bracket was already there. We waited about 30 seconds for his trophy. I have been in line at other tournaments for a half hour to find out they ran out (and will get it to us) by the time we got to the front. At the end of the day, that's not a big deal either. We are all human and oversights occur. The sport is about mat time and building character. The people in Fairport are not short on character and the hard work they put in to make this happen/dealing with the curveballs, provides excellent role modeling to their wrestlers.
I had a couple of first-timer parents that I knew ask me, "Is it always this crowded and long?" I assured them that it was not and this was an isolated circumstance, but in hindsight I wish I had stressed the things I typed above to them more.
Great job endorsing and promoting our sport Fairport Youth Wrestling Club!
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Mar 4, 2015
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RESHOOT
Joined: Nov 29, 2009
Posts: 184
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Hats off to the whole Fairport program. Rob , well done!! You have a bunch of great people helping you run one of the best tournaments in the State. For you to overcome the few flaws in the time you did it in was awesome. The Jr. Titans had some great matches. See you next year
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Mar 7, 2015
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omgomgomgomg
Joined: Dec 7, 2006
Posts: 76
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Props to Fairport on the number of Fairport kids that wrestled in the tournament. That is awesome.
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