Quote from jobro04 on January 1, 2024, 12:49 pm

I attended the rumble with my son this past weekend. Watching all the youth kids makes me excited about the future of wrestling in South Dakota. There was a 12u dual team that placed 8th out of 29 teams and a 9u team that paced 2nd. There was also 114 kids that competed in the individual tournament. Of those 61 placed in the top 6 and made the podium. Most brackets were 32 man brackets. The level of competition at this tournament makes it one of the tougher ones in the country. Watching all the kids go challenge themselves outside of local competition was great. A lot these kids spend extra time training outside of their school clubs and it definitely shows. That’s why I don’t understand why there is so much hate against kids and parents who choose to seek training opportunities outside of their local school clubs. If local clubs don’t want kids seeking outside opportunities then they need to put out a better product. So many people keep saying kids just need to have fun. I agree with that but kids can be shown that you can work hard and have fun at the same time. Also it’s definitely not fun to go out and get your butt kicked at every tournament. If kids and parents are willing to put in the time to take advantage of outside opportunities it shouldn’t be held against them. It’s usually the same parents that are against kids seeking outside opportunities that are upset at the lack of success of their kids. It’s not our job as parents to make everyone else happy. It is our job to give our kids every opportunity we can to help our kids achieve success in whatever it is they want to do. It mostly boils down to parents being too lazy to take advantage of extra opportunities for their kids.