I wouldn't mind home weigh-ins. But what happens when your wrestler’s weight is challenged?
If the child weighs 105 on Friday night and has breakfast Saturday morning and weighs 106.3 when they get to the tournament and the weight is challenged, what happens? Booted from the tournament? Move them up a class?

I am asking as a tournament director, not as a parent. Don’t start the cutting weight comments. I don’t have kids that wrestle.

Mike,

The problem was that the coaches couldn't get to the brackets because it was too crowded with coaches, parents, wrestlers, brothers, sisters, etc. Again, I'm not sure we need the whole brackets at the start but if we could get the print out that has the wrestlers listed with their initial bout numbers it would be great.

The reason this is important from my perspective is that we usually have 40-60 kids that we are trying to track and at the same time we are trying to divide coaches up to the proper mats. We like to be able to tell the kids which coaches will be coaching them that day so they know who to look for.

I agree that remote weigh ins give the advantage to the dishonorable.....I also don't think it will be a big problem. I am willing to accept that risk in order to make the experience easier, most cost effect, and more enjoyable for the majority of our kids and families.

Magnum,

Great point. My recommendation is at open and novice tournaments we don't let the weight be challenged. We adults accept what is turned it.

If we allow challenges, then we can always give a 1 lb or 2 lb allowance. This really is not different than if you do Friday night or Saturday on site weigh ins. What do we do know if a kid weighs in Friday night at the tournament site and then is challenged on Saturday? You can handle it the same way. As a tournament director it is your call.

Shawn Budke

We could move to block wrestling. No predetermined weight classes. Take the first 5, the next 5 and so on and put them all in round robin brackets. This is how many WI and IL tournaments are run. Then you can lie about your weight but you have no idea where you will end up. I really think everyone gets way to caught up in the weight game for these weekend warm up tournaments. We do need to be strict for the qualifying series but the rest of the tournaments are just work outs with medals.

I do agree that the the Coaches should be handed a list of their wrestlers with their bouts before the brackets are printed.

The printing is time consuming. This past Saturday one of the TRACKWRESTLING servers wasn't functioning properly so they rerouted us. If you are running a tournament and notice poor performance then you should call the support number immediately. The Tritz brothers are very friendly and helpful.

I also recommend that everyone setup their bout sheets to print only one per page. This gets the results back faster and it lessens the confusion in for the data entry folks entering the results.

You MUST train your table workers to fill out the bout sheets completely and accurately.

The biggest issue with starting on time is the high number of no shows. This impacts the operation regardless of whether it is run with TRACK or manually unless you are not concerned with getting wrestlers matches.

I like the block wrestling idea. When I bracket I remove all predetermined weight classes this gives the computer more freedom to make full brackets. I just use the weights that the kids entered as there actual weight. The only reason I dont use actual weight is because I worry about it taking to long to enter in system & starting late. I may use actual weights next year. The point is rossville is basically using the block system now & we like it.

I love using block wrestling. We used it last year and it was wonderful. The kids and coaches seemed to respond well to it too because it gave the kids some different competition than they were normally wrestling because they were locked into a certain weight in a lot of the other tournaments. It doesn't take that much time to enter the weights in either. It also made it easier to eliminate the scratches because the kids that didn't weigh in were pulled out immediately, before printing any brackets. Granted, we are only a Novice tournament, and we will only do round robin brackets, but it is not difficult to incorporate in the larger open tournaments too. JMO
It was great to see everyone! Wish we could have seen more of you!

Happy New Year!!

I didn't see "event tools" as an option, but I did find the "Team bout Schedule" which is under the "Print Documents option." I don't see where you can just print off the first round of bout numbers. Am I looking in the right spot?

I think this thread could turn out to be one of the most productive in a long time. There have been several great ideas on how we can make the weekend experience better. I personally think there are a lot of advantages to Track Wrestling and believe it is the way to go. Shawn and Will, I love the idea about Friday night remote weigh ins & block wrestling and again believe with a little work these additions can enhance the experience. With regards to the risk of cheating while allowing remote weigh ins, although small I think it still could get away from us. However, with a little effort it could be easily mitigated with the possible oversight of a third party e.g. district/assistant director, and/or officials. The advantages as listed above far outweigh the negatives and with a little tweaking these could be a great improvement. Will, “workouts with medals”? I like that. But, I also feel we have rules in place for a reason and agree with keeping a level playing field for everyone. I do not agree with the practice of the host tournament not weighing in their kids just because they are hosting nor do I agree with selecting an earlier time for them to weigh in. What is wrong with making weight and making it at the same time everyone else is? The block wrestling idea is a creative approach and as long as you know what to expect and accept it, it may be a pretty good thing. Question, if a wrestler wanted to wrestle up or go after someone in particular how would this be handled in this environment?

Ultimately I think the weigh in process is a huge contributor to the root cause of running late. Addressing this frees up more time for everything else.

Keep the thoughts coming.

There is a lot of value embedded in this thread. Would you all see value in setting up a Wiki type of site/format that would allow for pulling out the tips, lessons learned, best practices etc into a consolidated place?

It seems that with the experience gained from running a tournament in TW, it would be nice to document key aspects of that experience and capitalize on the knowledge base we have for others to benefit?

Possible topics, off-the-cuff:

-Efficient tournament setup. (Number and type of people, number of printers, computers, etc)
-How to employ different styles of bracketing.
-Missing kid / incorrect information after brackets done.
-Rounds not numbered correctly.
-Approaches to efficiently setup mat/match assignments.
-Other Issues experience and how you resolved them.
-Handling off-line registration in TW.
-Printing bouts for each team.

For those that my not be familiar with a wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

For each of these, walk-thru's, video's etc could be added as well. Any thoughts? Is there something like this already aside from the FAQ/Checklist on TW?

I could contribute from a content and technology/hosting perspective.

Joe,

I think that is a great idea. I think the list you started is a great place to start. Great idea!

Shawn Budke
Leavenworth County Spartans

Like I posted earlier, I think you just do off site weigh in , you have your coaches go to designated posts on all four sides of your town, for example we live in Valley Center, so we would have 2 coaches go to Goddard, 2 to Derby, 2 to Salina and 2 to ElDorado. Then they work weigh ins and bring everything back you enter your information and post all your wall brackets and print brackets to sell, and wrestle. If you have no shows then scratch them that day. Sound pretty easy but not sure if everyone would like this or not. Just suggestions to get started on time, I think this is the main problem everyone is running into. Other than that Track Wrestling is pretty smooth.

Scratching at the tables defeats the advantage of the TW system. YOU HAVE TO DELETE ALL NO SHOWS THEN BRACKET. The reason for this is simple. Wrestlers that are not at the tournament are not on the brackets! This is the best way to do it. The other option is wait at table for 5 min then go get your hand raised. & wrestle your first match at 50 or 60. Having brackets on the wall the night before & selling brackets has to be sacraficed to gain this advantage. Tournaments started late before track wrestling. There is getting to be alot of people that know how to run this program & it will get better.

I was talking about the mobile site for the coaches. The administrator can print off the team bout sheets which is found under the "Print Documents". I think it is a great idea to have these printed off for the coaches at the coaches meeting. But there will always be some coaches that don't make it to the coaches meeting and will be scrambling to get the bout numbers right before the tournament starts and thus comes in the mobile site which can be accessed by any web-enabled phone. Both options will bring up the first round bout numbers and mat numbers for the team selected. It also will bring up any following rounds bout numbers for round robin brackets as well.

I've been noticing that some of the tournaments are assigning mat #'s to weight classes, determining bracket types, saving seeds, and building their brackets prior to weigh-in. I'm under the impression that this isn't supposed to be done until weigh-in is over and scratches have been eliminated.

Have I been misinformed?

You have been given the right info. It really saves you the headaches later.

It has been suggested in a previous post about allowing remote weigh-ins. I think this is a great idea, and could speed up the saturday morning process. Here is what I would like to do at our tournament, but would like your feedback.

1) Manditory Pre-Registration.

2) weigh-in your kids Thursday prior to the tournament. Typically there will be practice that night, which will be more convenient for each club.

3) Each club would need to e-mail me Thursday night...say by 10:00 p.m. letting me know who made weight etc. This would allow me to import the wrestlers into the test site so I could make sure our ducks are in a row.

4) Have a coaches meeting 1hr & 15min prior to the start of the tournement. Print off each clubs participants. Each team would then inform us if there are any scratches that need to be made.

5) Eliminate scratches, build brackets, bout sheets etc., and start wrestling on time.

I know this isn't perfect. There will be some who cheat, but I think most people are honest. Our Tournament is towards the later part of the year, and most people know where other kids from other clubs have been wrestling. Maybe we could have a 2% tolerance. If a kid has his weight challenged (maybe weight challenges need to be cut off by noon), and he is over 2%, then he will be eliminated from the tournament.

Comments?

Pelland, I think you will have a lot of success with your approach, good luck. Remote weigh-ins are a great idea if handled with integrity.


Here is a suggestion/request for those using Trackwrestling. Please release your information to the public as soon as possible. One of the benefits of this program is the live update feature. This allows those not attending the ability to keep track of their club's performance throughout the day. While recently attending Tulsa Nationals I became very frustrated that I could not view any details of an ongoing tourney. What good does it do to keep this information private until the tourney is about finished? What are the benefits of not releasing the entries prior to the tourney and why not release the data to the public at the beginning of the tourney?

Go to the test site before the tournament & practice bracketing & fixing mistakes--AFTER BRACKETING. This is not hard to do. To fix bracket mistakes after bracketing go to particapants & pull up wrestler that has mistake & correct mistake (age and or weight are mose common) the system will tell you what to do from there. Dont forget to reapply number scemes or changed brackets & bouts will not have bout numbers. Then print changed brackets & bout sheets.

Does a club have the ability to create the bracket or is it done for you by track wrestling...

Its your choice

I was wondering that because I saw some pretty interesting brackets... Where the two top kids faced each other right away in a 8 man bracket. Then they both pinned there way out the front and back after thier match with each other was done...