It is even worse than I feared. They are having the A class be for boxers with 11 or more actual bouts or 6 or more wins. If a boxer has 10 or fewer bouts and 5 or fewer wins they are B class. That means a kid who has 0 or 1 bout would potentially have to box against another kid who is has been boxing for several years, has 10 bouts of experience with a 5-5 record. Some of those losses could have been years ago or close losses in National tournaments. It would be a total mismatch. This tournament used to be about getting kids experience. Now they can get experience, but the likelihood of that being a very bad experience is too high for me to risk with young kids. The costs have just gone up, because now these kids will have to go to numerous club shows to try to get experience. We all know that many shows limit the number of bouts to 12 or 15 or some other number and many don't want a bunch of J.O. bouts. It is going to be much harder to get these kids "good" experience.
Our gym had 10-12 kids that would have gone to the tournament if they had kept the C class. Now we will probably not go or we will take 2 kids who each have 2 bouts of experience (they might be able to get another bout before December). I am still concerned with taking a kid with 3 bouts of experience who might have to face someone with 10 bouts of experience. I still think the cutoff should have been much lower. Anyone with more than 5 bouts of experience should be A class. Yes, there are still risks, but way less.
