Random thoughts here, please comment:

I have been pondering the idea of an "unofficial" A-AA middle school state championship.

Does anyone else think that this would be a good event to host some time before the Carolina Open?

When would be good dates and who could host it? Do not wanna but heads with the Carolina Open and its qualifiers.
Best date in my mind would be the same date as the Carolina Duals at Rock Hill. How many A-AA teams enter a MS team into it?

Would we really be competing with the Carolina Duals as it is mainly for your larger middle schools.

What about consolidated schools? Who gets to come and who doesn't?

Looking at facilities and general location Indian Land seems the most logical place, having the facility to host 4-5 mats plus plenty of hotel accomdations and proven track record of running efficient tournaments.

Not sure what Columbia High but they have hosted some AAU stuff so it might be adequate.
Gilbert was nice for an 8 man bracket but no more. Would we need a 16-man bracket?

A lot of kinks but the right tournament director could make it into a great tournament.

I don't really have any middle schoolers to deal with, but it seems like there are already a lot of events for them. Is there already a middle school state championship? I know there is the AAU thing that people go to. IT just seems like there are already almost as many champions in this state as there are wrestlers. That is a lot of why a state title in SC means little in comparison to others.
That is not to take anything away from those that have them. Better to have one than not.

How many A-AA schools have JV teams? For that matter, how many AAA and AAAA programs have JV Teams.

I assume you are talking about a Duals Championship and not individual.

no, I was referring to an individual championship. Many varisty A-AA teams have a hard time filling 14 weight classes. It is even more difficult for an A-AA team to fill an 18 man MS team. As successful as our team has been in the past we have NEVER filled a full MS team and cannot compete at the Carolina Duals. For example, two seasons ago we had 6 forfeits in our lineup but in the traditional tournament we finished 7th or 8th I believe. Our dual record was 4-12 that season.

For the same reasons other A-AA schools enjoy the traditional tournament...take Bishop England for example....they have had trouble filling 14 weight classes but for as long as I remember they are very seldomly out of the top 10 in the traditional tournament. I think an unofficial A-AA tournament will just give all of us a better understanding of what we can expect to come at the varsity level.

If it weren't for the AAU I would not be aware of kids like Cody Pirkle who will thrash some kids as a frosh in a couple years. I seldom see the Woodruff MS program that quitely produces some late blooming hammers.

I understand the "watering-down" effect many are afraid of, but when I say "unofficial" I mean just an individual tourney done before the real (or not really..since we cannot call it) MS State Championship/Carolina Open. Then our champs can see where they stand at the Carolina Open against all qualifiers.

GWDdad, Chesterfield fields a full JV team but we have no other JV teams in our area to wrestle. As far as I know we are the only A-AA team in the lowerstate that does so.

OK - I'm on your wavelength now. How exactly do kids qualify for the Carolina Open?
I know Cody wrestled in both AAU and on the JV squad for Ware Shoals. He missed a few AAU events so he could qualify and eventually WIN at the Carolina Open. I'm not sure whether the WSJV squad wrestled any duals meets or not.

In terms of roster size - the same problem exists with ES duals - the teams who are typically in the finals are teams that manages to field a full or nearly full roster.

Right now there's not a JV program feeding GHS to wrestle in when my son hits 7th grade, so he's either going to have to just continue under AAU and USAW or we'll try find a way to petition to let him wrestle in one of the neighboring districts that actually have a JV team. I've got to do some inquiries over the next year to better understand how this all works.

there are certain qualifiers for the Carolina open, and you have to place (top 3 I believe) in one of those tournaments to qualify for the open. the middle school tourney at BHP is one of those qualifiers

Last year there were 9 qualifier tournaments with certain geographic areas being designated with two tournaments each which kids could wrestle in (ex. Lexington and Lugoff were one region). Once you wrestled in one qualifier you were locked into that region. Each tournament would qualify two kids, except for Aynor and Hilton Head qualified one each because they fell in the region with Summerville which produced two qualifiers. Therefore (7 tournaments x 2 kids) + (2 tournaments X 1 kid) = 16 qualifiers total for State. You were only allowed to wrestle in two qualifiers total in your region;cept for Summerville region, I guess, which had the three tournaments.