The Tournament of Champions

For two days I have been watching/reporting the 'Tournament of Champions' at the Western Park here in Vernal. 35 teams sent 600+ wrestlers to compete to see who is the best of the Wyoming/Colorado/Utah tri-state area. Being in radio on the "cool" station in town, we get asked to be the arena announcers. Now, as cool as that sounds, this event was a two ENTIRE day event. See the picture below? See the #848? That means that that match was #848, as in 1, 2, 3, ....666, ...and 848 (848 wasn't even the last one, its when I finally left). That is a long time to watch wrestling and that doesn't even count all of the JV duals happening simultaneously.
In the picture to the left you will see that all of the attention is focused on this championship match. During the elimination rounds that lasted from Friday at 3 until Saturday at 4:30, there were 8 mats all with unstoppable action. A new computer system helped to get the matches in and out at record pace, so those poor refs were working non-stop for 8-10 hours a day. The computer program and all of the brackets made me think of Kent Hansen who is a master programmer and bracketman. Imagine 15 different weight classes with 32 wrestlers each and double elimination (except 1st and 2nd place, one loss and the best you could do is 3rd). It was a mess, but the computer system that some wrestler nerd came up with was almost perfect.
The picture below is of my radio station boss and me. He was the real arena announcer, I would call in and do updates on the radio station itself. I was there for support and back-up announcing when his voice went hoarse. In the picture below you can see that it was a fairly big arena with a lot of people in attendance. We had the 600+ wrestlers like I said earlier, but they also had parents, coaches and cheerleaders. A big draw.
The school that I was there to cheer for was Uintah High School, I am wearing their official wrestling jacket. But 'the Basin' had 5 teams represented: Uintah, Union, Duchesne, Altamont, and Rangley CO. As far as team efforts, Uintah took second but none of their wrestlers took a personal championship. That had to have been the most disappointing part of the tournament they hosted. None of the other 'Basin' schools took a personal championship either. Delta UT won it all.
Uintah also had something unique, but not unheard of. A female wrestler from Uintah High school took 7th place out of the 32 wrestler braket in the 103 lbs. weight class. It had to have taken a lot of courage to be the lone woman among boys.
There, that is my life as of today.