Age Rules??

This may have been a topic before, but I am new to KS wrestling and just had a question about the age rules and why? Why is the b-day cutoff before the season starts? This makes no sense to me. A kid could turn 8 in 2010 and wrestle 6 and under?? or a kid turning 10 this year could wrestle 8 and under?? and so on. What in the world is going on? How is this in any way fair to the other kids? It puts the others at a big disadvantage in my opinion. I mean kids can be 7,9,11.... before the season starts and wrestle down? Could anyone make any sense of this to me? or why won't it change? The reason I was asking is, I was watching kids at Ottawa this last weekend and thinking, wow, that kid has really caught on quick and i wouldn't want to be in his path in a few years. Only to find out that kids could be 6 months away from turning 8 wrestling 6 and under!!

they can be 7 and be able to wrestle 6U but they can't be 8

i have 3 boys with Dec.,March, and June b-days. the only one with the slight advantage is the Dec. b-day.

go to ks wrestling home page click on kids division & the age tables are in there. summer birthdays are not good.

I don't think you could pick a cutoff date that would be 100% fair to everyone. If you did it on Jan 1st then a bunch of kids would be changing up during the season. So it prob has to do with w/ the likely hood that the kids involved would be less than 6 months older than the age group they are in. As you go through the system you see how this eventually works out. It just seems a little daunting when they are younger. Imagine if your wrestler had a Dec 31st birthday, how that would work into the equation.

Well it isn't fair becuase I have a son with an August 30 birthday and he is always on the bottom. He never really is on the top of his age group. Even though it isn't fair we cant change so we deal with it. If it wasn't the Sept. 1st date then it could be Jan 1st and then the people with Dec birthdays would be in the boat. Someone always has to be the youngest and the oldest. Wrestle hard and do your best.

you just need to plan better when your going to have a kid,, getting pregnant in December or January would solve the problem

My son's is Dec 29th! He wrestles up an age class in Missouri or at National tournaments where most cut off dates are Jan 1st. He'll be a Cadet as an 8th grader. I keep asking him why he didn't wait three days to be born!

If the Cut off is August 31st, then you August 30th birthday is good. September 1st on the otherhand is a basketball birthday!

Isn't August 30th the second worst?

yes it is. brainfart. my apologies.A little dyslexia this morning. August Bad, September Good.

Don't worry about it. No one can compete with my superior intellect.

I personally am not willing to wait that long.

Wouldn't Jan 1 at least be more suitable? since the biggest part of the season starts after the new year? I know they can't be 8 and wrestle 6U. but they can be 6 months off of 8 by the time state rolls around. In my opinion the Missouri age groups make more sense. I just don't see the reasoning behind this. Even September 1 is 2-3 months before most tournaments. Does anyone else see the crazyness in this? Or is it just accepted? Is this just a KS thing or is it pretty universal around the country?

I think a lot of people have wonderered why Sept 1 is the cutoff, but realize that no matter where the cutoff is, some will benefit and some will do the opposite of benefit, whatever that word is. Therefore there has been no real push to change the date, crazy or not.

but that also means that just 6 months before state rolled around they were 6

Its the same reason that the cuttoff for entering kindergarten is august 1st because its been that way from da 1 and always will be! No matter what day of the year they pick it will always be unfair to someone that has a bday before the date and not after!

Was labor induced?? If it was, then make the world a better place and punch the doctor in the face.

down year/ up year you can't change that. think about it there will always be a kid with a "good" birthday THIS YEAR, next year it's a "bad" birthday. it's common sense. we all make too, much of the little things.

that's if they were born in sept. let's get a count of all the kids currently holding a usa wrestling card and see which month has the most birthdays down to the least amount of birthdays. and put the cutoff date on the least amount so it won't effect to many kids getting an advantage of what month they were born in.

you are all forgetting, wrestling teaches life lessons. life is not fair. you will not compete with any age allowances in the real world. teach your youngster to deal with tough circumstances, at a young age, it will improve their quality of life later. quit trying to prepare the path for the child.

We could move it up one month each year until we get to August of the following year, then start moving it back down until we get back to September and then repeat. That way everyone has a chance to be on top of the age bracket.

I know I've been wrong before, but trust me on this, it will be totally awesome!

then will they change the rule every year as new kids come in with new birthdays and others leave??

i say it is what it is. and it always will be..

Isn't there a waiver form we could fill out if laber was induced? Or maybe I should start a new thread, "Moms who allow laber to be induced and the wrestlers who suffer!"

just do a two year cycle like they do for high school sports

we could do like the frontier league and nckl have proposed in high school, expand the age groups. all 5 years olds that were born in march wrestle in their own bracket, the same for april, may, june, july, august, sept, oct, nov, dec, jan, feb. then 6year olds march, april, may..............see it's not so hard, then each and every kid will have a real good shot. oh wait, let's cut the pound difference to 1 pound while we are at it. if it still seems unfair after the trial first year, we can cut it to first half of march/ second half. looks to be good for everyone, let's vote.

I'll vote for it. But I don't want home schooled kids in there. To much advantage!

I second it.

happy birthday MR oven. You guys got my vote. State will be simple-- YES!!!

Thanks Mike, another day. work, practice,dinner, bed.

Hey 7 someone is always gonna have an advantage! It will never change no matter where the date is put! I think if every thread on this site was looked into and changed the cost to wrestle in kansas would be tremendous, because the kids wrestling is gonna have to hire permanent people and pay them lots of money to research all these ideas! So......... be happy that the cost is where it is, because all everyone on here is doing for kids down the line is tryin to make it so unaffordable to wrestle! Dates a date no matter where it is put!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just my 2 cents!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GREAT IDEA headup lets put it in motion!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No

I have 3 sons wrestling , brithdays r in dec,may and the youngest is in jan. the one with the most disadvantage ,the middle one ,loves this sport with all his being, but he does have a great baseball brithday .And always i thought the season never really ended , Practice starts right after state.

My son's Birthday is August 16th, which puts him on the down side of the age bracket, but he has never complained about being one of the youngest in his age bracket. Actually he has relized that he needs to work that much harder to keep up with the older kids. Being on the downside of his age bracket this year he has earned his first trip to the State Tournament, he did not earn it by being one of the oldest and being more mature then the other kids, he earned it by working hard and listening and learning.And it also gives me a little extra to be proud of knowing that he is probably the youngest in his bracket at State, not that I could be any more proud of him for what he has already accomplished. Would I like to see the date changed, you bet I would, anyone out there for an August first cut off date..lol..

Matman 1976 I hate to correct you but it has not always been that way when my oldest son who is now 25 wrestled kids the cut off was dec 31. So if you were 10 in 2010 you wrestle 10 and under. With my second son his birthday is in July not such a good birthday. Next year he will be 12 and under. So he may meet a boy who is 13 because his birthday is in sept. and he will be 11 by just a few weeks. So far it has not been so bad but next year it may be. To me there is a big difference between an 11 year old and a 13 year old. They start to mature in all kinds of ways. I think dec 31 is better.

Just wait until high school when your 14 year old freshman may be wrestling an 18 year old man.

To qualify for 12U this year you have to have been born between 9/1/96 and 8/31/98. This is 2 years no matter how you count (24 months, 104 weeks, 730 days, 17520 hours, etc). It makes no difference where you put the dividing line it will always be two years. n7m13c19, if your boy was born on July 1st, the oldest boy in the bracket could only be 668 days older than you if you are on the bottom side of the age and potentially 303 days older than you if you are on the top side. Just looking at the days of the calendar year, there are 8.493% (62/730) of posible days your son could have been born that are worse than your sons in terms of USAWA-KS birthday cut off. No matter where you draw the line...somebody will be in a similar situation as you.

I personally believe keeping the USAWA-KS age cut off consistant with when kids start school is the best...I have one son with March 27th birthday. If I wanted to look out for him, I would say why not make the USAWA-KS birthday cut off line be your age on the first day of the qualifying series? Any one of us could make an argument why one date on the calendar is better than the other. But in my opinion, if you break any situation down to "actual age" I don't think saying that an "11 year old is wrestling a 13 year old" is a very logical reason to shake things up.

Well mark it has never bothered me till at district that I was watching some boys in the same weight only 12 and under. They just looked so big!!! And mature. By next year maybe my boy will seem that big and mature. I don't necessarily want it changed because when you change it the problem just shifts to someone else and I know this. Whatever date you pick there will be good bdays and bad ones. When it is your xhild just makes you worry. Good job with the math. You know if I had known they had changed maybe I would have had him in a different month LOL!!!!!

this topic does come up every once in a while. The problem is theres not completely "fair" way to do it. Somebody always has the bad birthday. Jonny For instance has a DEC birthday which always puts him on the young side in Mo. Jan 1st cutoff but its never really held back his performance or success. But I always have made sure to let him know not to use it as an excuse.

Sharon,

In your case, the eighteen year old man better bring his "A" game. Speaking of A's, I think I saw where someone proposed that the wrestlers get seeded based on their grade cards:) Good luck this weekend.

n7m13c19 I've been there with my oldest...there is an awkward adjustment in the 12U division as some kids hit puberty faster than others. One fix might be adjusting the age groups down a year. This would bring in a few more younger kids. It would also keep the 7th & 8th graders in one class, for the most part anyway, and separate them from the 6th and 9th graders. In this scenario your age groups would be U7, U9, U11, U13(or MS), and HS. The unintended consequences of this move would hurt a 9th grader that isn't ready for the HS division and might even push some older 8th graders into the HS division unless the criteria for U13 was extended to include all 8th graders.

Any changes made need to be evaluated for the impact on all of the kids.

When my boy got to 12 and under he ran into a lot of kids that hit that stage in their life when they were maturing into young men. It can be tough since some of them can muscle your kid around pretty good. He adapted to it though but it was frustrating at first.

My son is on the underside of 12u now, and that is the biggest thing that I noticed....puberty makes a big difference at this age.

Maybe instead of age we should divide the boys by amount of armpit hair they have LOL!

LOL. Here's a conversation I could envision:

Grandma: How did you do at state this year grandson?

Grandson: I did great grandma. I am a 12 and under, January to August, no arm pit hair division state placer!

what about the 6U? will there be a U5?