Therein lies the first problem. As is obvious, no two people can agree on the/a definition. I have real questions if any definition of a novice could be enacted without amending the constitution, not just the by-laws. If a constitutional amendment is necessary then it would require a two-thirds majority to enact. We have trouble getting that kind of majority for things much less complicated and controversial.


And there is the second problem. It is always going to be an 'on your honor' type of system. So there is still going to be the same amount of people abusing it then, as there is now. Those that think Cathy Juby or a tournament director is going to be going around checking entries to see how long a kid has been carded, are silly!

my proposal for people to do what is right for them, isn't much different than what you say here sportsfan. I AGREE if it ain't broke don't fix it.

the only difference is tournaments don't determine much of anything at this time, the parents do.

seem like i read this somewhere else????

say it isn't so.....sportsfan and I seem to be on the same page.

With all our wonderful technology and the definition of novice we should be able to track all wrestlers that have a wrestling card. Most tournaments use track wrestling for their tournaments. Track wrestling keeps profiles on wrestlers with placements etc. Why cant we use this system and work with Track wrestling to categorize by the stats it keeps. Length of time, # of placements and types of tournaments(open/novice). Then when the tournament makes brackets track can flag on open wrestler that is in a novice bracket. It would take everyone using Track wrestling and of course time for kids to be tracked. Just an idea sure it has flaws but what doesn't. At least computers aren't biased or lie.

I heard an Idea recently...
If you do decide to track it by just the number of years they wrestle then maybe you could do it by USA Wrestling card number
1st year the card number starts with an N
exp:N11458...
2nd (and or 3rd) year kids with an I for say intermediate
exp: I11458...
And everyone else has an E for experienced
exp: E11458...

So that way track wrestling could track by card number and so could clubs wanting to police it that dont use track wrestling.
When they sign up they must send a list of USA Card numbers along with the entries.
Now if a club is purposely changing I's to N's then you can hold the club accountable.


I dont know how else to track and inforce
But I still dont think we should track novice by tenure.

All it would take is adding to the card - 'member since'. Not real hard in today's age. Cards could be checked during skin checks.

That is, if you believe "novice" is a length of time.

thank god my son won his first open tournament this weekend in Chanute. we will not be wrestling novice ever again. our club has 0 novice wrestlers from here on out. i think. now we wont have to get yelled at by anyone on this topic.

I saw a kid hit a spladdle off a shot which he was setting up by letting the opponent in on his leg (missed the pin but scored) after that he threw in the legs, power half and stretch out a kid in a novice tournament - that young man is about ready to move on to open even if he is a 1st or 2nd year wrestler. You can fool some of the coaches but not all of them.

I would give him another year in novice. After all he didn't pin the kid with the spladdle.


Novice can not be determined by any length of time or placements in tournaments. Many novice tournaments only use round robins. Some open tournaments could have the same thing in their age and weight.

Coaches could have the novice kid wrestle 10 or so novice matches.If a kid wins 80% of his matches in novice he should move up.

I got additional confirmation this weekend that it's not simply enough to look at records.

My 11 yo (who by a fortuitous birthday is still in 10 and under) wrestled at SFT Sunday. Only two kids in his bracket, so they went best of 3. He got second. Or last. Depending on how you look at it. Either way he got beat twice. On paper it's a second place. In reality, he still has a LONG way to go before he can protect himself against B or C wrestlers.

My 8 yo, however, won his first novice. Against two other kids and there were no pins. So does winning two matches on points mean he is ready to move up permanently? Maybe. But we need a little more mat time to know for sure. We are definitely doing some D entries at bigger opens this year so we can see how he does against a bigger pool of kids. So far I think he has only wrestled 5 different kids this year.

As a parent, I really do like round robins for the novice wrestlers. The goal for us is more matches, and round robins make that more likely for a new wrestler.

According to win percentages your 11yo is -2 and still has a ways to go before becoming open.

Your 8yo is +2 if he wins 6 out of his next 8 you may want to evaluate the whole novice classification.

A win to loss ratio is the best option in my mind. You may have kids that have wrestled for 3 and 4 years that have not won, or won very few novice matches. And on the other hand you may have a first year kid that has won 18 out of 20. Which one do you think needs to be novice?

so if my kid wrestles nothing but novice tournaments wins 80% of his matches but still cant put a half on right or run actual moves he doesnt need to be novice any longer. so no i dont think thats the best way to present it. next.

I think we are wasting a lot of time considering the very few problems that we have with "self policing" the novice tourneys. So a kid that you feel like "shouldn't be wrestling novice tourneys" kicks your kids' butt, so what, he got a better color medal than your kid. I promise you, noone will remember who won the 6u 49 lb Valley Center Novice bracket in 2011.

Our goal should be to continually tell our kids that it starts to count in HS, and keep them out for this great sport/life lesson instruction. And even if they never turn out to be a state champ, placer, or qualifier, we can NOT allow them to quit, as that is giving up, and that ain't what this sport is about, and it ain't what life is about. We have to keep kids out, no matter how many times they get their tails handed to them.

I think that as a coach or parent, it is up to me to determine when it is time to throw my kid to the wolves.

Once a kid starts having success at novice tourneys, he should be put in some open brackets. But I should also be allowed to take him to tourneys where he can see some success.

We just had an incident at the Sante Fe Trail Novice Tourney this weekend. One of our 10u girls who won 2 matches all last year and yet to win one this year faced a 3rd year 10u Trailhand wrestler who has placed 4 times dating back to Feb '09. When the parent approached the coach/director, she was lied to and told he was a 2nd year wrestler(TW proved otherwise) then was told he was too busy to deal with it. This girl broke her Radius in her wrist and is done for the season. With this happening I would not be surprised if I don't see her back at my club next year. Such a shame.

Late last year a novice kids didn't sprawl quick enough and my son hooked his fingers on his leg and injured hid hand really bad. Them damn novice are just going to hurt the open kids!....lol

SFT injury, sad to see but this is a contact sport. Without knowing the details I would think novice vs open kids has a ton to do with it. My son has never wrestled in a novice tournament, but has wrestled a tons of novice kids. He is as physical as he can be, and never has broken anything on anyone else.

The sad part is coaches, parents, and tournament director not handling the issue whatever the outcome it never gets better ignoring it.

Also wish a speedy recovery to the injured wrestler!

Folks,

I want to provide you an update to what the committee has been doing on this idea of defining Novice. I am pasting the info below as it is the report that I sent Matt Treaster. He will provide this report to the state board this weekend at their meeting.

If you read it closely you will see the "Way ahead" for the committee. This is based on a discussion I had with Matt as we were trying to get an idea of where the state board wanted us to go with the committee. Please look at the options and their descriptions. Most of these were derived from the great feedback you all gave on this forum. We tried to capture the variety of ideas that you all submitted.

As I see it, the crux of the problem is that Novice is ability based and therefore that is subjective criteria. It is hard to give prescriptive, set in stone rules in this case and end up doing what is best for the kids (this is my opinion). Therefore we tried to give a wide variety of options.

The bottomline is that you get to have a direct say in what we as the state do on this issue. We will discuss the options at the District meetings this winter/early spring, provide the state board feedback, and then if warranted present the options and vote on them at the state body meeting in Oct 2010.

Please look this over and provide your thoughts and feedback to myself, your district reps, or discuss ideas on here.

Thank you for your help.

What we have done......

1. Stood up the committee.
2. Reviewed the Georgia rules.
3. Started a topic on the USAWKS talk forum to solicit thoughts, ideas, opinions, etc.
4. Developed 4 Options (will explain in more detail later) 5. Received feedback from about have the committee.
6. Committee members have talked with other members of their district.

Explanation of Options......

1. Option 1: Do Nothing
Currently Kansas has not rules, guidelines, etc for defining Novice. The determination of Novice wrestlers is left to club directors, coaches, and tournament directors.

Discussion: A fair amount of people on the talk forum support this idea, however, just as many dislike this idea and would prefer to have some sort of criteria established by the state. So far, none of the committee members have came on line to support this idea.

Option 2: Georgia Model
Develop a Rookie category for first year wrestlers only. Define Novice as first or second year wrestlers that have never placed at state.

Discussion: This is the most prescriptive option. It give clear rules but doesn't allow for those kids that take longer than 2 years to develop. Another disadvantage is that this idea adds more divisions. A few on the committee think this would hurt clubs that try to host tournaments in that you would not get enough kids for each of the divisions in order to hold a tournament and cover your expenses.

Option 3: Guidelines
USAWKS officially defines Novice as wrestlers with 3 years of experience or less; who have never won an open tournament; placed in 4 open tournaments and/or has not won more than 4 Novice tournaments. These are general guidelines to help provide a framework for tournament directors, club directors, and coaches. The ultimate decision of determining if a wrestler is a Novice is defined by the respective tournament director and respective club directors/coaches in accordance with these guidelines.

Discussion: The intent of this option is for the state to provide general guidelines to assist tournament directors, coaches and club directors. It is not intended to be prescriptive and seen as a set of hard criteria. Many on the talk forum and on the committee of being too prescriptive so that coaches don't have the flexibility to all kids to wrestle based on their ability. This is the unanimous choice from 4 of the committee members that have communicated their preferences.

Option 4: Hybrid
Establish a Rookie category strictly for first year wrestlers. Define Novice using the same definitions as Option 3.

Discussion: This option provides some flexibility but is very prescriptive on the Rookie division. The reason most of us dislike this idea is that it adds another category and numbers for tournaments can become an issue (see Option 2 discussion). None of the committee members have recommended this option.

Where do we go from here......

1. I am going to put the 4 options with their descriptions on the talk forum and illicit feedback and ideas.

2. The district reps will present these options at the district meetings before the seeding meetings. The idea is that each district discusses these options so the district reps can get an idea of which option their district prefers.

3. The committee will discuss the preferences from the different districts and make a recommendation to the state board at the state tournament. The recommendation will only consider looking at whether the districts prefer Option 1 or if they prefer one of the other 3 options. If the recommendation is Option 1 then this issue will not move forward after the state body meeting. If the majority of the districts prefer having some sort of definition (ie, Options 2-4) then the state board will take these options forward to the state body meeting in Oct 2010 and the state body will vote and decide which option to implement.

Shawn...
I think the issue that will require the most thought would be the tracking and enforcement of the definition.
If you base it on anything other then tenure then you will need some form of tracking and enforcement.
Will coaches be required to submit records???
Will someone be hired to sit and track novice results???

I think you all need to BASICLY leave it like it is. Let a tournament define what they are going to allow to wrestle at their tournament. First year, second year, first year with no 1st place finishes, or WHATEVER.

If someone has a protest they take it to a tournament director and its handled there. The tournament director talks to the people involved and makes a decission.

Will people lie and cheat? YES!
Will people find a loop hole and exploit it? YES!

But out of the 1000 entries we see every weekend at different novice tournaments all over the state, how many offenders are we really talking? 5? 10? 20??
My guess is less then 1% and Im ok with that allowance!

Now, I do think it would be OK for the state body to make a suggestion as to what they think is an acceptable definition of novice.

1 or 2 year kid who has never placed in an open tournament (I dont care how many kids are in the bracket! If your worried then don't enter them!) or never having won the Derby Novice State Championship.

At the end of the day any parent or coach (especially coaches) should know that keeping a kid at the novice level actually ends up hurting them in the long run and in my opinion, that child will not be around for a long period of time because they are too far behind the curve.

Is there exceptions to these rules and ideas? YES!
EXAMPLE: Can a child be physically or mentally unable to compete and should be allowed to wrestle longer at the novice level.
But that is something you will need to take up each and every week wuth a tournament director.
If a child is in that situation and still has the heart and desire to lace up those shoes, I would not tell him NO if it was my tournament!


These are just my thoughts and ramblings on the matter!
Good Luck in your quest for finding the best answer!

BLT,

Thanks for your feedback. I just want to clarify one point in referance to this one statement "I think you all need to BASICLY leave it like it is. Let a tournament define what they are going to allow to wrestle at their tournament. First year, second year, first year with no 1st place finishes, or WHATEVER.".....

Please don't think that myself or any of the others on the committee spearheaded this. We were asked by the state board if we would volunteer to do this project and specifically Matt asked if I would chair the committee.

Personally, I agree with almost if not all of your post above, however, I know there are other perspectives and points of view. That is why when you look at the options we developed we intentionally tried to include a very broad range of options (do nothing to very restrictive).

Also, I do not plan on making any decisions or having the committee make any decisions. As I see it this should be left to the state body (all of the clubs) to decide what we as an organization want to do.

Personally I prefer either Option 1 or 3 for all of the reasons you mentioned above.

Again this is my opinion and as the chair it is my duty to present all options and opinions to the board and the body for a decision.

Good news is that we will all have a say at the end of the day.

Thank you very much for your comments because they really helped shape some of the options that were developed.

Shawn