Greetings Board,

I'd like to start by thanking all of you for helping make our Men's and Women's Freestyle & Greco-Roman State Tournaments a huge success. This year's tournament was the largest and one of the best ever. Our tournaments being classified as a Regional, with an OEP on Friday night, provided the necessary feedback and knowledge to our growing pool of officials to 'get it right" for our membership. The improvement from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon was noticeable.

What can we improve?

1.  Weigh-ins through the membership system- no cards, no mistakes. Let's consider purchasing some scales.

2.  Separation criteria - needs to be clearly defined. 

3. The floor needs to remain clear for the head table and the fans in the stands- We need security.

4.  I think it's time to start requiring USAW Coaches Education to be in the corner  for our state tournaments: Bronze for Cadet and Junior and Copper for any age groups below.  This change will require #3.  It can also be aided by #1 - we can have them use the membership system to get a coaches band - they would register as coaches on trackwrestling, much like the kids register at the tournament. Volunteers would not have to look at cards and id's and determine if memberships and certifications are current and correct.

5.  Allow walk-ins at a cost or pair the tournament the night before and charge to change weights. I think this is an either/or proposition, I don't want to turn people away from competing in our tournaments but not planning will come at a cost.

6. I'd also like to start recording our policies for issues such as: double-bracketing, wrestling out of division, etc. A resource we could all access, as well as our membership, would be beneficial.

Other items of interest:

* Tournament hosts should enter the event ID in track wrestling to ensure results are added to trackwrestling profiles.  We did this for the state tournaments so our athletes who qualify for RTC training opportunities can attend without questioning from compliance departments.

* Southeast Polk will be a remote weigh-in site for the Northern Plains Regional this weekend. Weigh in from 5-6 PM on Friday, May 13th. The tournament is looking for table help each day and will be paying any interested groups, from Tom Kuisle:

Northern Plains State Leaders,

NP is still in need of table workers to cover 5 mats on Saturday and 7 mats on Sunday. Northern Plains is paying a stipend of $100 per day, per mat (1 worker). If there is more than one worker per mat then $100 must be split amongst those workers.  We have found that 1 worker per mat is sufficient.

Please take the responsibility of coming up with enough people to cover 1 or 2 mats per state.  This is not a Wisconsin or Minnesota tournament, it is a Northern Plains Tournament.

If anyone is interested in volunteering let me know. I'd wager Michael Doyle would give any coach or club a point per day towards the coaches pool for helping in addition to the $ and their points for attendance.

* The Silver College and World Team Trials are the following weekend in Coralville at Extreme Arena.

* The Last Chance Tournament will be held at Ankeny Centennial, as planned.  We will need to provide table workers and help put the mats away at the conclusion of the tournament.  For those unaware, Ankeny graduations are on Saturday, June 4th. 

My Brags:

Rob Williamson will be working the WTT as an official.  This makes him the first in over 20 years from our state to get this event. 

Charlotte Bailey has been elected to the Northern Plains Rep for the Women's Age Group Council, congratulations!

Our membership is at an all-time high in every category: athletes, wrestling leaders, clubs, and events.  We are definitely "keeping wrestling on the move." Wyatt and Mark would be pleased.

Steve Mickelson came through with the square readers to minimize the cash and checks that our directors need to handle. In addition to setting up trackwrestling, pairing the tournament, handling the medals, treasury and membership, Steve got this done during a busy week, just in time. Thank you for making everyone's job easier, Steve!

Keith Donnelly and Michael Colleran expedited the NFL Raffle Tickets to get them in our athletes hands at the State Tournament. Our wrestlers, families and directors appreciate your hustle! I'm hearing some very positive comments about the ease of sale for these tickets. Thank you both!

Speaking of hustling, Dustin Roland, has used an online store, and tournament t-shirts to help offset the costs of U16 Duals. Brent Jennings also found a sponsor, Pritchard Auto Sales, to donate vans for the junior duals at a small cost, saving thousands of dollars for our organization. I'm proud that we haven't raised our costs more than $50 in the last ten years.

We've had an enormous number of wrestlers represent our State at the Open, U15's, U17's, U20's, the Showcase and Women's Nationals. Congratulations to ALL!

Felicity Taylor U23 Champion & US Open Champion, Ella Schmidt, U20 3rd; Tatum Park, US Open -7th; Rachel Watters, US Open-7th; Lilly Luft U17-7th; Katie Biscoglia U15-3rd & 14U-5th; Molly Allen U15-5th; Reenah Utterback U15-7th & Showcase 7th; Skylar Slade U15-3rd; Emma Peach U15-7th; Jannell Avila Showcase 8th; 

Ben Keuter U20 Champion, Hunter Garvin U20 2nd GR & 4th FS; Jack Thomsen U20 5th, Zeb Gnida U20 6th, Wyatt Voelker U20 6th GR &7th; Kolby Franklin U20 3rd; Jackson DeWald U20 2nd GR; Spencer Mooberry U20 6th GR;

Cameron Guenther U17 7th GR & 8th FS; Ryker Graff U17 4th GR; Matthew Beem U17 6th GR; Justin Avila U17 7th GR;  Jacob Walker U17 5th; Carter Pearson U17 3rd; Dru Ayala U17 4th; Jake Knight U17 6th; Nathanael Jesuroga U17 2nd; Kale Petersen U17 4th; McCrae Hagarty U17 3rd; 

Mac Crosson U15 3rd; Nico DeSalvo U15 6th; Timothy Koester U15 4th FS & GR; Kyler Knaack U15 5th FS & 3rd GR; Collins Hendricks U15 4th FS & GR; Dreshaun Ross U15 Champion; Cooper Hinz U15 8th GR; 

Marcus Coleman (Open-2nd) (Aden Reeves (Open-6th) Cullan Schriever (Open-8th) Michael Blockhus (Open 8th) Julien Broderson (Open-7th)

I've probably missed a few top finishers, let me know who, please. 

Congratulations to our Heartland Duals Teams for a great showing, the boys were 2nd and the girls finished 3rd.  Thank you Jeff and Charlotte for putting these teams together and creating opportunities for our members. 

If anyone has any suggestions for improving our state tournaments or what I can do to serve our organization better, don't hesitate to reach out.

Thanks for all you do for kids, the IWF and the sport of wrestling,

Jason Christenson