Trackwrestling is a joke...tournaments do not start on time. The only way to make it work would be Mandatory Friday Night weigh ins only. The brackets are not set up correctly...front side, back side, front side, back side. 25 cents per wrestler to run track wrestling. Ha Ha Ha I am loving it. Believe me I am being a nice as I can. Trackwrestling, please mandate it for every tournament, not just the qualifiers.

Beeson may be right. Last week I ate something bad and got sicker than a dog, the price of oil seems to hit a new high every darn day, the polar caps are melting and the bears are running out of ice to roam, I had a flat tire last month, my bank charged me an ATM fee, my daughter got a B on her spelling test on Friday, I can’t get my dog to quit chewing up the neighbors flowers, and the price of Tee in China is OUTRAGEOUS….heck if it weren’t for trackwrestling I bet none of these things would have ever happened. …sorry for the sarcasm; I’m going to bed. See all of you next week at State!

Beeson,
I think you are a great ambassador for wrestling but, I do not think I could disagree with you more about TrackWrestling.

The key to the weigh in situation is that each tournament has to have atleast 1 to 1.5 hrs between the end of weigh-ins and the start of wrestling.

That means that IF you are going to allow Saturday morning weigh-ins you should go from 6 to 7 with a planned start time of 8:30.

This allows time for the printing of all brackets and the bout cards.

The sequencing of rounds and how they occur can be controlled by the tournament director.

At the Valley Center open tournament earlier this year we recognized that the default setting for rounds did not conform the the traditional method seen in Kansas Kids. We adjusted it to so that it did function the way we are used to seeing.
I will note that I believe that at most National tournaments the rounds are set up the way that is defaulted in TrackWrestling.

I have utilized TrackWrestling in atleast 4 tournaments this year. Each time I use it I found better and more efficient methods to use the software.

I can say that probably the single biggest mistake a tournament can do is to assign mat numbers and bout numbers before all the weigh-ins have completed. If you have a lot of scratches it takes too long to re-number the bouts.

You have one of two options.
You can re-number every bout on the affected mat and reprint all the affected brackets and bout numbers.
You can manually renumber the bouts and hope that the time and pressure of wanting to get started does not cause you to number them incorrectly. I will note that in a case where the bracket type changes, there may not be any numbers available to change into. Case in point an eight man bracket that has been changed to a four man round robin. In this case there is only one match in the first round of the eight-man bracket but there are two matches in the first round of a four-man round robin.

I guess the bottom line is that if tournaments are not willing to have an open mind and spend some time learning how to use the system, they will not be successful using it.

During three tournaments we utilized the TrackWrestling weigh-in cards to manage weigh-ins. Each tournament we got better at the process. Friday night we weighed-in around 495 wrestlers within 1 hr and 20 minutes. We did have a few stragglers but the bulk happend during that first surge. We had exactly ONE wrestler for the entire tournament that was a problem. He took his card home and did not turn it in.

Once again I learned something from even this process. Next year we will have a weight check scale outside the weigh-in room so that kids can spot check their weights prior to getting into line. Hopefully this will enable them to recognize being over and start working it off earlier.

I think that TrackWrestling is by far the best computer application on the market.

I hope you do not find this offensive. I am only trying to share my knowledge and experience with regard to this situation.

Remember as a society we can not get better and we can not improve unless we are willing to change and adapt to our surroundings.

Steven

Steven, No offense taken. I have not had any positive experiences with Trackwrestling, though I honestly have given it the benefit of the doubt. I was under the impression that Subs and District would be better. I personally have just not seen the advantages of using Trackwrestling or any computer application for that matter.

I continue to hear talk of Friday night weigh in only. This will really hurt the numbers of wrestlers in the tournaments. Several posts this year have discussed what we can do to encourage wrestling...Friday night only weigh in will not do that.

Randy started a post about Instant Gratification...isn't that the only reason that everyone wants Trackwrestling. They want the instant gratification of seeing who their kid is going to wrestle and then instant results. All I want is a tournament to start on time.

Beeson,
I think that as more and more clubs get comfortable using TrackWrestling, you will see more tournaments become a lot more flexible.

We have seriously discussed having clubs register their own kids in TrackWrestling for our open tournament next year. By doing so it will allow us to keep the registration open a lot longer.

Most handwritten tournaments have their brackets done by mid-week of their tournament. This greatly inhibits late entries to the tournement.

By using TrackWrestling, a tournament could leave registration open until Thursday at mid-night.

I do not think the local type tournament could get by with Friday only weigh-ins but you could offer a 6 to 7 Saturday weigh-in and be ready to wrestle by 8.

I believe the key to TrackWrestling is better planning, better understanding of the system, and great teamwork by the club or clubs putting on the tournament.

Just my 2cents...

Steven

Chad,

If you don't like TW it is because you have NEVER manually set up a tournament. Steven is on target with every statement as it Coach Knox in his post. There are so many tools in the software that we haven't even began to tap. I know I have posted it before but I will do so again. If you have a 500 wrestler tournament and you manually bracket you invest nearly 100 man hours in pre tournament setup. Using TW you will have about 3 man hours (if everyone enters online and if you require payment there will be $0 of uncollected entries) in pre tournament setup. On the day of the tournament you are stuck with whatever brackets you have setup because there is NO WAY in one hour to figure out every scratch and bracket if it is NOT in a database like TrackWrestling. I was involved in the use of the software for four tournaments and with each one I learned more about the software. We had a thirty minute delay at districts because of a decision I made that would allow us to know for sure that everyone weighed in. This led to seven (of 530 wrestlers being left off. We reinstated and managed 68 scratches and still only started 30 minutes late. If I had just scratched the weigh in cards for those who never picked them up we would have been ready 30 minutes before start time! You will get nothing but praise from me on the use of Trackwrestling.

I am ADAMANTLY AGAINST Friday night only weigh-ins and they are totally unecessary even with only an hour between weigh in end and the start of wrestling. What we need is more practice with the application and more super users. Aain, I have learned something new every time we have used the software so just think how much we would learn if we ALL used it. All the results would be up instantly too.

Just like all other aspects of a tournment, the keys are just as Steven listed: BETTER PLANNING, MORE EXPERIENCE, BETTER UNDERSTANDING, GREAT TEAMWORK, AND I WILL ADD ENOUGH PC'S and PRINTERS!

Long live Trackwrestling!

The Ark City Tournament was manually set up this year and started on time. Maize was manually set up and started on time. I have not been to one Trackwrestling tournament that has started on time. When the Trackwrestling tournaments begin starting on time, then I will begin to support Trackwrestling.

That is a pretty narrow way to judge a tournament. So if your son only gets one or two matches instead of 3 or 4 but the tournament starts on time it was better? If every coach/parent would notify the tournament director that a wrestler was going to be a scratch, every tournament would start on time. It is not the software, I promise. If you don't really know or you have never run a tournament both manually and with Trackwrestling you really should reserve comment. It is more than likely the people factor that causes the issues not the software.

I guess if some tournaments want to continue to use an abacus when a computer is available so be it.

Beeson,
I believe that if starting on time is the primary concern, then we should begin looking for the root-cause of not starting on time, rather than just assume that tournaments did not start on time due to TW.

I would venture to say that if we had the facts and data about tournaments and their planned start times, we would find that there is much larger percentage or manually constructed tournaments that do not start on time.

I also believe that every club that stepped out of their comfort zone this year and used TW should be commended for doing so.

OK, Jake got the same number of matches at the manual tournaments as he did at the track wrestling tournaments.

Every Trackwrestling tournament that started 30 minutes to two hours late stated that they did not know how to use the software correctly.

Look guys, I did not like the idea when it started, but gave it an honest attempt to like it. I'm sorry but I'm just not sold that this is what is best. Don't tell me how good it is, show me how good it is. As of now that has not happened.

Guys, I can agreee with both sides of this and I see the problems. But if parents would take a little responsiblilty and we could do away with scratches and kids not making weight would that not make things go a little smoother? I understand kids getting sick, but I can't believe this late in the season that you can't make weight or thought they'd give you a tenth or two.

Beeson,

What tourneys did you attend? Our team went to 8 tourneys this year that utilized the system. Most of them started within 30 minutes of the posted time on the flier; those that didn't had bigger problems than trackwrestling. In January, we woke up to blizzard conditions and had to extend weigh-ins 1 1/2 hours to accommodate. We still managed over 100 scratches, wrestled 465 kids in 150+ brackets in a split format (we had an open/novice tourney) and still cleared the gym before dark. The software works. It has been proven to do so. Cokeley is right on with his assessments above. If you have ran tourneys pen/paper and had the chance to do so with trackwrestling you'll never go back to the stone tablet. There may be other programs out there that do the same thing...I don't know. But for me I am sold. I started talking about this concept in 2004...I just wish I would have developed it myself; hats off to them that did.

The program works; better for some than others..but it works. I guess the same statement is true for pen/paper tourneys as well.

Mark