what if there was a wide open state tournament? not a grand state, but an open state tournament for each classification.

no qualifing, just come as you are! so what if there would be some 64 man brackets, very few weights would be full anyway. in such a format there would be no more worrying about good kids not surviving extrmely tough regionals, such as the NW regional held in wakeeny, or the norton regional held last year.

i think it would be fair to all involved. and i know it could be done too, it wouldnt take that much longer to run the state tournament either. just a few more matches is all.

and if this idea is absurd; then why not seed top teams and place them in respective regionals accordingly? i know its been stated before as far as NW kansas goes most, that NWKL teams wouldnt care if they had to drive to a eastern regional to compete.

to bad KSHSAA wouldnt entertain such an idea....or would they? you hear the state talk about saving money all the time, so why not eleminate regionals? KSHSAA eleimated one qualifing tournament several years back, as you had regionals, sub-state, then state. i think it having an open state tournament could be a win/win situation for all involved.

thoughts?

I thought about that earlier. I think it would be really good for the 5a and 6a schools that have more talent then varsity spots, but also get to regionals and have only 5 guys in a bracket.

I think maybe do a state tournament though where you have to qualify during the year at some form of varsity tournament by placing in order to get a state invite like what they do for NAIA, and have up to 2 guys per school qualify per weight. But only 1 guy can score points team wise per weight.

The problem with these scenarios would be seeding. The meeting would take forever!!! Many athletes would not have head to head or commons and coaches would just argue forever. I personally like the set up we have now. I know that there are really good kids that will be left home from a couple of regionals, but that is part of it. You had better bring your A game that weekend.

As far as seeding the regionals, I know for a fact that several of the AD's from the NWK area have offered to drive and pay for the hotels, but the KSHSAA won't hear of it. I don't understand why. I guess it is the same reason that the 5A and 6A football playoffs are seeded and the 3A and 4A playoffs are by region, I am just not sure what that reason is.

what about qualifing the top 6 at each regional and sending the 4th, 5th and 6th place finishers to state early and have them wrestle for the remaining 4 spots on the bracket. you could give the 4th place finisher a 1st round bye and then he would wrestle the winner of the 5th and 6th place match,(all 3 wrestlers being from different regionals), the winner would take the 4th places guy on the bracket. it would require 8 matches per weight but with 4 mats it would go pretty quick. award no team points for these matches. this would allow for regionals with tough weights to get some deserving guys to state yet still allow each region at least 3 wrestlers at state.case in point, my kids regional bracket has 5 state qualifiers (the entire state only has 5)somebody who qalified last year is not going this year.

my bad on last post. there are not 5 returning state qualifiers at his weight. (there are more) but all the returning state medalist are coming from this regional.(4)

I kind of like the idea of a 64 man bracket, and why not do it like they do in college, they have no problem with it, but wouldn't the seeding meeting for the 64 man bracket take less overall time than the whole time it takes for the seeding meeting and a regionals to happen? Or have the state set fourth a list of criteria to go by, ie. Win %, Pins, Head to Head, and so on and so fourth, would make for a great few days of wrestling...

Alex

As cool as this idea sounds... it would take FRICKIN' FOREVER! There would also be some big mismatches in the first few days. I love wrestling as much as the next guy, but 4 straight days (at least) would be an endurance test just to watch, let alone to wrestle in...

A 64-man bracket can be be wrestled in three days without anyone wrestling more than five matches in a day. College freshman get thrown into right away and I have seen some wrestle more than seven matches in a day.

And besides, that's pretty much what 6A and 5A are now anyway, isn't it?

What? A joke?

yeah... we all know norton, hoxie, sainty, abaline, and clay center never have talent at the JV spots.... how did the NTOC end this year?

Aaaand...?

I would rather have those matches drug out over a period of 2 weeks rather than 3 days... It would be much easier on the wrestlers. They're not in college yet, why make them wrestle like they are?

In college they wrestle a 64-man bracket in one day. High school kids could handle it in three without any problems.

Nate Smith, not with the 5 match a day limit the KSHAA puts on our high school wrestlers.

Interesting idea, but earning your spot throughout the season and getting the propper seed, along with winning the matches it needs to make it to the championship is difficult enough. There is no need to go make it a complete full-team format at the state tourmanent. It would take the focus off of the elite wrestlers and water down the pool of talent so much that it would be difficult until the final rounds to really care about who is wrestling who. I said it was an interesting idea at the beginning of this post, but i really thing that it is a terrible idea.

its not like the braket would be full...alot of them would have several byes so mabey this nate smith is right..

Well my two cents worth-

Seeding meets are a lot (use of two words there shoud give me a bonus point) of arguing now and I think it is too bad. For me I would like to see it done in the percentage race like basketball does it. Coaches wouldn't even need to travel to tournaments and sed they would do it purely off of records.

State- this is a two fold question. If you are worried about team points then I feel bad for some teams right now. If you are unlucky enough to get stuck in a tough regional you will lose some kids before state and thus loosing numbers which doesn't put you are a level playing field. In the past some teams from the east would bring a full team where in norton regional they might be lucky to 8 to 10 leaving a team 4 people short. So I believe the State team dual tournament will eliminate this.
Second fold is personnally when I wrestled my goal was to win State and that meant beating everyone in the state so having a tough regionals meant that I eliminated some good kids and and would have them at state. So having the open state wouldn't have mattered to me. Give me a tough regional and get me to state- that gives me the mental edge becasue I know tough kids are staying home.

Scooby- That would work if everyone had the same difficulty in their schedule. Seeding wrestling off records is a terrible idea because some teams have a lot tougher schedules than others. Are you in favor of punishing teams for wrestling tough competition during the year? I would like to see us do NOTHING the way basketball does. The sub-state seeding is a joke for basketball. A team could be 16-4 with a loss to a 14-6 team at their sub-state and two losses to a 15-5 team there and be seeded above them. Did you get the best teams in the top seeds. NO! JOKE!

Rick-
You have to beat the best to be the best. I understand how getting the number one seed is important but if you are not good enough to make the finals then it doesn't matter where your seed is. The time and arguements that occur in seeding meeting take up a lot of time. You know as well as I do that the better competition you wrestler then better you are going to become. So I would rather wrestler the best out there and end up 6 seed then wrestle no bodies and get the 2 or 3 seed.
Now I would agree that the best wrestler might not get the best seed but it would save on time and money and I believe that in the end it wouldn't make much of a difference

I guess the reason the basketball seeding is okay for them is because you have to win it to advance to state. However, in wrestling you have to be in the top four and most coaches are aware that their kid may not be the best, but he might be the fourth best at the regional. The money spent is very small and is worth it. The time does not bother me as a coach and I think the time is well spent if we get our kid in the spot on the bracket that he has earned through the criteria like head-to-head, common opponent, etc.

Some very interesting ideas and a wonderful topic. I will be the first to admit I do not have the solutions but can maybe clarify a few things. The KSHSAA is very clear that they want to get the best wrestlers from the four regions of the state-not necessarily the best wrestlers (at the state tournament). Also by dividing the state up geographically they think they aresaving schools money by reducing travel distances. We all know this is not always true but that is their position. Ask Rick Bowden if you do not believe me.