Preseason Club Call Run Sheet

Read the three outcomes above. Name a scribe. Anything not on this sheet goes in the parking lot at the bottom.

Which preseason events does the club officially travel to — and which are "go on your own, wear the gear"?

• Super 32 (Greensboro, NC) and Preseason Nationals (Council Bluffs, IA) are the two on the table. Pull up the real 2026 dates and entry deadlines on the call — do not plan off memory, and get them on a shared calendar before we hang up.
• Official vs. optional. An official trip means we book rooms, travel as a team, and staff a corner. Optional means the family goes and we do not owe them a coach in the corner. Say which is which out loud.
• Standard to go. Do we cap the travel roster or set a bar — practice attendance, a coach's nod, a match-count minimum? Decide the standard now, before anyone's feelings are attached to it.
• Money and rooms. Cost per athlete, deposit deadline, hotel block and who holds the card. Rooming rules for minors and the chaperone ratio need to be written down, not assumed.
• Coach coverage. Two events, possibly overlapping windows — who is in the corner at each, and who covers home practices that weekend.

How many events in each tier, and can we publish the whole season at once?

• Three tiers so families self-select. Local — in-town, roughly monthly, everybody goes. Beginner — novice-only or first-year brackets, so a new kid's first tournament is not against a four-year wrestler. National — travel, with a stated standard to attend.
• Beginner is the hard one. Not every local event actually runs novice brackets. Someone has to check each host and confirm before we put it on the tier-two list.
• Publish it all at once. A season released in pieces gets low turnout — families cannot budget or book around what they cannot see. One calendar, released once, is the single biggest lever on the participation goal below.
• A point person per tier so a parent with a question knows who to text.

Do we join a dual series, host our own, or set up home-and-home duals with partner clubs?

• Why duals. More matches per dollar than an individual bracket, a whole day of the team in one room, and kids who lose early still wrestle. It is the fastest way to build a team identity in a sport that is mostly individual.
• Cheapest option first. Home-and-home duals with two or three partner clubs cost almost nothing and can be scheduled in a week. Start there before we commit to hosting.
• If we host: mat space, refs, insurance, admission and concessions. A hosted dual is one of the cheaper fundraisers we can run — but it needs a lead, not a committee.

What is the model for the in-season months, and who calls the school coaches?

• Constraint first. State association contact and out-of-season rules govern this, not our preference. Confirm what is actually allowed during the school season before choosing a model.
• Three workable models. (a) A separate club night that starts after school practice ends. (b) A high-school-only block inside our existing club nights. (c) Technique-only open mat in season, full club again after the school season.
• Relationships are the real currency. A school coach who feels the club is poaching mat time will shut this down. Call them before we publish anything.
• Watch the athlete. Kids doing two-a-days in season plus weight management is where injuries and burnout come from. Whatever model we pick, cap total weekly load.

How do we get more of the roster competing, and competing more often?

• Get the two numbers first. How many active members do we have, and what share of them actually entered a given event last season? Everything below depends on those, and nobody should guess at them on this call — assign the pull.
• Two levers, and only two. More members, or a higher share of the members we already have entering events. The second is cheaper, faster, and usually where the real gap is.
• Kill the friction. The usual culprits: parents registering individually instead of the club entering as a block; the schedule not published early enough to plan around; event fees as a surprise cost instead of bundled into dues; and no ride. Pick the top two and fix those.
• Make competing the default. Name two or three "everybody wrestles" events on the calendar where the expectation is the whole club goes, and treat opting out as the exception rather than the norm.
• Set a target we can measure. A headline number — 100 on the floor at our biggest event — is useful only if we also track entries per athlete across the season. One big turnout with the same twenty kids at everything else is not growth.

Set the date, the format, and exactly what a referral earns — with a budget cap.

• Format that actually converts. Bring a teammate from your school. Games and relays first, then 30 minutes of real technique. No singlet, no gear, no fee to walk in. Parents stay in the room and see what practice looks like.
• The referral idea is good — bound it. Free gear per signup is open-ended and will eat the gear budget. Tier it and cap it: something small at one signup, something bigger at three, and a hard ceiling per kid for the season. Decide those numbers tonight, not later.
• One field makes it work. The signup form has to ask "who brought you." Without that, nothing is trackable and every claim becomes an argument.
• Have the ask ready. Whoever is at the door needs a price, a schedule, and a start date in hand — a new family that leaves without a next step usually does not come back.

In-house match nights — how often, and who runs the room?

• What it is. An in-club match night, matched by size and experience, parents in the seats. It gives a beginner their first live match without the cost, travel, and intimidation of a real tournament.
• Cadence and cost. Monthly? A set weeknight? Free, or a small fee that funds the pizza? Pick one and put it on the season calendar so it is not a scramble each month.
• It needs three jobs filled: someone matching the card, someone on the clock and book, someone officiating. Name them or the night runs long and sloppy.

Sky Zone or similar: date, headcount, and who books it.

• The point is the room, not the trampolines. Bond the returning kids and get brand-new families standing next to veteran families before the grind starts.
• Booking basics: group rate, cost per head, deposit, waivers, and whether we cover kids only or families too. Venues like this book out fast in the fall — call this week.
• Stack it. Same night as the new member night, or a week after it, so a curious family gets a low-pressure second touch.

One night, four segments — food, speaker, nutrition, gear. Who owns each?

• Run it in order: eat first, then a guest speaker (a college wrestler or a club alum beats a hired motivational speaker), then the nutrition and weight-management talk, then gear try-on and orders.
• The nutrition talk is the parent hook. Weight management done badly is the single thing most likely to hurt a youth wrestler, and most parents have never been given straight information about it. Get a dietitian or an athletic trainer, not a coach improvising.
• Parents participate, not spectate. Give them something to do — a drill, a Q&A, a sign-up sheet. A night where parents only watch does not build anything.
• Attach the gear window. Having sizing samples in the room the night the store opens gets orders in on time. See the teamwear item below.

What do we offer parents, and when does the store have to close to make delivery?

• Goal is a section that reads as one team. Tees and hoodies first; chairs, blankets, and a flag or banner if there is appetite. Keep the range small — too many options slows every decision down.
• Do it as an online store window, not a sizing sheet. Collecting sizes by hand and chasing payments is what makes gear miserable. Open a store, close it hard, order once.
• Work backward from the date it matters. Pick the tournament we want the stands to look right at, then set the store close date far enough ahead of it to clear production and shipping.

Lock three order windows for the year so we stop paying rush fees and missing events.

• The problem is one-off orders. Every time gear gets ordered reactively we pay more, wait longer, and someone competes in the wrong thing. A fixed calendar fixes all three at once.
• Three windows is usually right. Preseason (in hand before the first event), midseason around the holidays, and a spring or national window. Store open roughly two weeks, closes hard, no late adds — the "just one more" exception is what breaks every deadline.
• Set each window backward from delivery. Take the date athletes need it in hand, subtract shipping, subtract production. Decoration method changes that math — sublimation, screen print, and embroidery all run different lead times, so confirm the real numbers with the supplier rather than assuming.
• Separate three buckets. Required roster kit, optional spirit items, and parent gear. Mixing them is why orders get confusing and why parents think required items are optional.
• One gear owner. Not a committee. One person runs every window, start to finish.

Read the decisions back. Confirm every owner by name. Set the next call.

• Scribe reads each decision aloud — if it cannot be said in one sentence, it was not decided.
• Every open item gets a name and a date, or it moves to the parking lot below.
• Notes go out within 24 hours while people still remember agreeing.