Originally I was not going to spend any time on the subject of trending and session scheduling because that is what gave each tournament a unique feel. Again some tournaments have it down to a science and others are in dire need of help.

A few years ago our tournament looked like:

Mat 1 (Large Mat) split 4 ways
Mat #2 split 2 ways
Mat #3 not split
Mat #4 not split

That gave us 8 mats

After taking a look at the number of kids per session we noticed that the session 2 was 2/3s of our entire tournament. We needed to break them apart.

So we went to:

This tournament ran a bit better, not as many parents, coaches and wrestlers crowding the floors, however we now are looking at Session 1 being the largest group and session 4 being the smallest. If we move the 13-14 to Session 4 instead of at the beginning we would be pretty balanced. Yes, we have been trending a growth is the sport and need to adapt to the number of kids. We would prefer to be a 400 kid low stress tournament, but we also do not want to turn anyone away if we can handle the number.

So for next year I think our tournament might look something like this:

We might even turn the 13-14 into their own session and give them four full mats to use, starting them at say 3:30 or 4.

But going this route I think we can split mats based on the session:

Session 1 split 2 2 2 2
Session 2 Split 2 2 2 2
Session 3 Split 2 2 2 1
Session 4 Split 2 2 1 1 or 2 1 1 1

If for some reason we need to we can always resplit Mat #1 back to 4 during session 1, 2 or 3 to give us extra capacity.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Because you need to think about trending your tournament numbers, adapting to tweak as much organization out of your tournament as possible. Just because you did it that way for 10 years does not mean you need to keep doing it that way. Check out the numbers, the time, the backlog, the sessions that ran long, find a way to make it more enjoyable for the competitors, the parents and the coaches.