I just recently got my computer back on and I got something I'd like to share about tracwrestling. It's a great addition to our sport. I am going to list why I think this way. But before I do my list I want to say something on the bad. It's that we have not had enough tournaments in Kansas used it yet. Which the biggest draw back comes from this and that is not starting tournaments on time. If tournament directors would allow two hours after weigh-ins before wrestling gets started the tournaments would always start on time. Now some of the good stuff that will or could come from this. Less people, less paper work, better records, and probably the most valuable it saves you time. Now some of the stuff that most don't know, with track wrestling, tournaments can be set up were kids can wrestle the weight they weigh on saturdays. Now what this means, its like the national tournaments you send your wrestler in at low weight and if he doesn't make the weight, he moves up. (only up not down). Tracwrestling will allow for more wrestling and less weight loss. This will allow the youths growth from the time they enter tournament until the actual weighins. My dear friend Will, will understand what I am trying to do here. I am lobbying for teams who host tournaments to utilize these tools. It's easy to drive an old truck that I already know how to drive, than it is to learn how drive the new one.

If you don't like TW it is because you have NEVER manually set up a tournament. Steven Foster has commented on this forum and is on target with every statement as is 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.

We need to have more "block wrestling" and round robin bracketing during the season and using this software will allow you to guarantee your wrestlers three to four matches EVERY tournament and be ready to go on time if Trackwrestling is used.

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!

Mr. Cokeley,
Thank you for your positive comments!

Coach Knox and I have had a few conversations about TW and I would like to say that we are in agreement on many points. Probably the biggest point that we agree on is the ability allow wrestlers to wrestle what they weigh.

TW allows a tournament director to quickly make adjustments prior to finishing the bracketing with little problems. Of course your addition to my prior post is correct: having enough PC's and Printers.

TW also allows directors to set up multiple brackets within the same weight. At our open tournament, we will always wrestle as many RR brackets as possible. I believe this allows each wrestler to get more mat time.

Mr. Cokeley started a thread earlier in the season concerning the "health" or "lack of health" with regard to the number of wrestlers involved in our sport this year.

I believe the problem is that over time or culture has changed and both parents and athletes have come to be more demanding.

Normally when I ask a parent why they did not come back to wrestle the three most overwhelming replies are: (Parent replies)
"I do not want my athlete cutting weight"
"My son is first or second year wrestler and keeps getting put into open brackets."
"Time commitment on Saturdays. If my athlete played BB we could go somewhere spend two-hrs and go home and have the rest of the day to do other things."

I believe that everyone of these issues can be improved upon by using TW.

Cutting Weight:
Pre-Register at your targeted weight but, have the flexibility to adjust based on what they weigh when they step on the scale. (Move up not down).
Put a weight-check scale outside the official weigh-in room but allow only one shot at weighing in.

Competition:
Allocate as many RR brackets as possible.
This allows the less experienced to wrestle against their peers.
If we want some of these kids to stay with the sport, they must see some success early or they will not stick it out.
Think about it, if you send your first year athlete in as a "D" wrestler, they will be seeded dead last in the only available bracket, get two matches, get beat and go home!

Time Commitment:
The last issue is to be addressed is the Time Commitment.
If more tournaments could figure out how to wrestle in sessions, athletes would have the ability to wrestle more matches in less time and have more of their Saturday to do other things.

TW has the ability to do analysis of matches and mat time to allow for over lapping sessions to keep the tournament flowing.

At the coachs meeting at our open tournament we informed the clubs that we had a few targets that we wanted to reach:

Give each wrestler the most matches possible.
(We actually had a number of six-man brackets at our open tournament.)

Get them out of the tournament as quickly as possible.
(We had some of the six-man brackets get done in under 2.5 hrs)

Place the wrestlers in brackets that they would allow them a chance to compete against their peers.
(Of course this was based upon their rating sent in by their clubs, and we may not have got it right every time)

I believe that we can improve our sport but only if we have collaboration, be willing to change, and finally come together as a sport and become positive ambassadors for our sport.

Finally I would like to say, we have been given the privledge and opportunity to make positive changes on our sport. The question is are we willing to change to make our sport better?

Thanks for your time!
Steven

As Will is aware, we used "block" weights for our Novice tournament in Feb. We used the actual weights that the kids weighed in, and everyone seemed pretty pleased with it. Several coaches commented on how most kids were able to wrestle four to five matches and they liked the fact that the kids were able to see some new faces because they were grouped a little different depending how what their actual weight had been. The other thing that we did was to use round robins only. We used 6-man, 4-man and best 2 out of 3. It worked really well. The problem we did face was the amount of weigh-ins we had Sat morning. We did offer Friday night, but with apologies, didn' advertise it as well as we should have. I agree with Coach Knox, we should allow more time between weigh-ins and start time. Most of us feel we have to start at 9:00am, so we state this on the flyer, but if we say we're not starting until 10:00am, people aren't going to be happy about that either. Luckily, because we did use track wrestling, and we did do block wieghts, and even after we had 45 scratches, we started about 40 minutes late. I know this for a fact because my son sang the National Anthem at 9:35am. We were able to add some kids into the system after wrestling started (they were accidently deleted due to operators error), which did not delay any wrestling at all. It changed two brackets and allowed these two boys to wrestle. Yes, it was a little over-crowded in the beginning, due to the church service being held, but after that was completed, we able to spread out a little. Yes we had some other issues here and there. But overall, I would do it again and again. Track Wrestling saved me this year. We doubled in entries this year and I would not have been able to get it done with out it! The past two years, I have taken on this event myself, asking for very little help from others (because of my own stupidity) and I love to do it, but I will never do another without track wrestling or another program like it.

Sorry I've been so long winded. Take care, GOOD LUCK AT STATE, and mostly Happy Easter to all!

Steven,
I'm curious at to the hardware it took to run the sub-district tournament. My one big fear about trackwrestling is hardware failure, be that laptop, printers or copiers. How many laptops does it take to pull off an average size tournament like that?

Sportsfan02...

I will let Steven speek for himself. But at the D1N tourney and the D1 District we ran it with three computers and two good printers. We had extra's just in case for back up, but never needed them...we ended up putting one of the extras at the awards table to keep things moving there. D1N had 550 entrees (we wrested 487 after scratches) and D1 District had 677 entrees (we wrestled 650 after scratches).

Mark

sportsfan02,
At the sub-district tournament we ran 9 surfaces in the morning and 7 in the afternoon.

COMPUTERS
I believe we had five data input pc's and one pc set up for admin purposes. However we could have survived with three input PC's. It is better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

PRINTERS
One laser jet (44 ppm) printer: printed bout cards, wall brackets and brackets to sell.

One older printer (25 ppm) printer: overflow printer did not use very much.
One color bubble jet: We wanted to give the champions a color brackets on photo caliber paper. We had our logo imbedded into the brackets.

At Districts we ran 10 morning surfaces and seven afternoon surfaces.

COMPUTERS
Five Data input PC's and one Admin PC.
We had two to three data input people, one person printing bout cards

PRINTERS
One (30 ppm) printer: used to print bout cards and replacement brackets

One Older (20 ppm) printer: used to print overflow

One Color Photo Caliber printer: Used to print colored brackets for champions.

The one major difference is that because we had to assign bout numbers early, we Pre-Printed all first round bout cards and brackets.

Because of scratches, we had to reprint two full mats worth of bout cards and brackets and a hand full of other bout cards.

At both tournaments we also utilized the TW weigh-in cards and had to input actual weights into TW. This process is easy and it is just busy work. But I believe it saved our bacon. We did not have a single wrestler get removed from the tournament that actually made weight. We downloaded the data into excel and were able to quickly identify the clubs that had kids without weights entered. We called them in quickly and were able to inform them. Out of 595 entries, we had only one wrestler that we did not recieve a card back from that actually made weight, but we caught it before we took him out.


I think everything went wonderful...
If we would have had a little better coordination between the host club and myself (My Fault- I should have let them know how much time we needed between weigh-ins and the start of wrestling) we would have shut off Saturday morning weigh-ins 30 mins early and we would have started on time.

I was pretty pleased with the outcome and I hope we did a good job of suporting the district.

I hope this answers your question.

Am I reading this correctly? Someone is telling me that at National Tournaments, if you don't make the weight they are entered, they are bumped up?

I know you can do it at Liberty and the tourney's involved with that race. I don't think it is right but it happens. Tulsa you make weight or go home...the way it should be.

I should have qualified my comments...

At USAW sactioned events, if you do not make weight, they move you to the approporiate weight class.

For example if a wrestler attends the USAW National Tournament that used to be in Kansas but has been moved to Iowa, they will be moved if they do not make weight.

I apologize if I did not explain better.

Coach Beeson I believe it's just a matter of time for Jack Roller and his staff to go to this format.

Coach Knox,
I agree with you. I think as soon as more tournaments begin using TW they will become more flexible and less rigid with regard to making weight.

Steven

Jeeze Chad. In high school I agree, make weight or go home. For kids it is all about getting mat time and experience. Especially at the local youth tournaments. More liberal combining of weights should be encouraged and better use of the tools we have available should make the tournament experience better for wrestlers and parents. Again, the problems you have encountered were due to human error or issues. Trackwrestling is a great product and will prove to be an asset in the long term growth of our sport.

Two problems with bumping up if you don't make weight.

1. Teaches Bad Habits, If your kid is that close bump him up.

2. How many idiot parents are going to see how far down they can suck a kid, and if he dosen't make it wrestle up.

very, very good point beeson. sry had 5 minutes to kill. but i agree 100%.

if you don't make weight you don't wrestle. every one is always trying to make it that much more easy for the kids now day's.

and thats the problem. kids now day's want everything handed to them. lets let them work at it.

Most of the time it isn't the youth who picks what weight he wrestles. Even in highschool if you don't make weight you have the option to move up. If the coach choose to move you up, he could. You got to look at the big picture the youth gets to wrestle after practicing for week. In some states you enter your name, pay your fees, than they match you up or down. It discourages losing weight. How would you feel, if you lost five pounds, and you wrestle a guy who is five pounds heavier than you.

i think this will make kids push the limit to lose more weight than ever before. because they know that if the do not make weight they can move up so they will try and push the limits knowing if they fail there still in it. or like beeson said it idiot parents, will abuse this system as well for there children.

as far as "HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF YOU LOST 5 POUNDS AND HAD TO WRESTLE A GUY 5 POUNDS HEAVIER"

lets say you miss weight by even a couple ounce's and trackwrestling lets you move up a weight. would you or would you not be wrestling some one heavier than you in the next weight class as well.

the way our system is set up you make weight or you do not wrestle, so i believe most that cut weight do it in moderation, knowing what they can lose and still wrestle. take that away and kids will be pushing there bodie's to a deadly level, knowing there in no recourse if the do not make weight.

just my opinion, man i have to get rid of the computer, or i will never get away from this forum for the season.

I think that everyone needs to make the weight they signed up for! If it is about mat time then we can go to combined brackets and so on.
I think people making weight is a very important part of the sport. It this age 5 or 10 pounds can be a HUGE advantage. I have seen my youngest son (8&U) give as much as 30 pounds to another wrestler and my oldest son (14&U) gave 65 pounds in Tulsa.
MAKING WEIGHT IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE PROCESS!