I am not going to mention any tournaments by name but I have noticed this problem quite a few times this year. Why would you spit a weight class up with a 3 man bracket and a 8 man bracket? It is completly robbing the 3 man bracket of much of an accomplishment. Wow you turned out better than 2 other kids, woopie.
This late in the season throw them in one bracket and let them go after it. We drive all over the place and show up and see a 3 man bracket in the A with our kid and then in the B, they have a full 8 man bracket? One certain kid has won the B bracket all season long and he is still in the B bracket? These kids have wrestled all season and towards the end I feel the rateings should be thrown out the window and let the cream rise to the top.
The 6 and under kids the season ends for most of them next week and we do not need 3 man brackets when there are a total of 11 kids in the weight at this point in the season.

I fully agree! I have two kids that wrestle and for the most part have done very well this year. I wish they would combine more of the weight classes and make more than just 3-4 man brackets. We are looking for competition to get better. At one tournament we started out with four kids and when they started to wrestle found out that two of the kids did not even show up. If I would of know this from the beginning I would of moved my son to a heavier weight class for harder competition. It's not just about getting a medal during the season. Its about the final at STATE!!!

It really is a catch 22 here.
If you run big brackets then people go else where for smaller brackets and mat time. If you split it all up then the really good kids start to complain about seeing the same 2 kids each week and the if theres a scratch etc etc etc
Sometimes it is also an issue of mat space and the number of matches per mat etc etc etc
I say take the mat time but also find the tournaments that you know will run the big brackets.
This late in the year big bracket is the only way to go in my opinion.

When you run a tournament its hard to please everyone.
Just attend the tournament that tend to run the kind of brackets your wanting.

That is way we need to do more block brackets and forget about weigh classes until sub district. Weigh everyone in, split them into their age groups, start from the lightest and put them in groups of 5 for roundrobins. Every kid gets 4 matches every weekend, you have less chance of seeing the same kids because weight will fluxuate, and if you want to be fancy you could use ABCD ranking along with the weight to make the brackets. You may also need to make a rule that you would not exceed certin weight differences between kids depending on ages. What other ideas do people have?

Block wrestling is the way to go. Weight the kids in group them and let them wrestle.

I agree, We would at least get more matches in case somebody scratched from our "bracket". I wouldn't mind if my kids wrestles somebody a little heavier, it would only make them better.

So are you saying write and number every bracket after weigh ins??
I think if you were more then 300 or 400 kids it would be a total cluster...
And then everyone jumps on here and hangs you out for starting late.
If I'm looking for mat time I will find a smaller tournament advertising RR or pool brackets. If I'm looking for the 8man + then its the bigger tournament that I attend.
Don't talk down to tournaments that make the best with what they got.
As for block wrestling, I've never seen it in action so I guess I will stay open minded.

The basic principle behind "Block" wrestling is fantastic...

After everyone weighs in you determine how many wrestlers you want to "Block" together (Example 5 wrestlers), you set TW to start at the lightest kid within an age group and then bracket the first 5 wrestlers (example)together then start the next bracket...The only issue that I believe may exist is the experience level of the wrestlers (A,B,C,D)

I have only been to one "Block" tournament but I think it is great!!!

I think the "Scramble" format is the best format for both competition and mat time... if people are willing to combine some weights to get the best of the best (Within Reason) wrestling each other...

I know at one tournament we took 4-AAA wrestlers from one weight and 4-AAA wrestlers from the next weight up and placed them into a scramble... Each wrestler had 5 matches against very, very good competition... We then took the rest of the kids (All C/D wrestlers) and placed them into their own "Scramble" bracket.

Just my thoughts... Just remember there is more than one way to skin a cat... My preference is to give each wrestler the highest number of matches, against the most reasonable competition, in the least ammount of time!!!

The block concept would take a lot of manpower and would be tough for most tournaments to pull off due to the mass confusion. It could work if you do satelite weigh ins the night before so the brackets could be made in advance I guess.

I would like to see where everything is done on a program that tracks the records of each kid so parents stop rating their kid as beginner/novice just so they could win it. Take the power out of the parents who always lie about the ratings. The computer could bracket them evenly with a fair criteria and have equally amount of kids in each bracket for the weight. The sport would also be more fun because all the tournaments would be tracked and results posted for all to see. Would make wrestling more fun and fair for everyone.

Tired of seeing a kid win a C bracket all year long while an honest parent who ranks their kid as average gets thrown in the A bracket with super tough competition and has a hard time placing. Ten kids in a weight should have two 5 man round robins, not seven kids in one bracket and three kids in another bracket.

Would you think the same if the three were rated as A wrestlers and the others as D wrestlers?

Just a thought, but also showing that someone will not be happy with the match ups.

If you have everyone register early like we already do the organization and bracketing is even easier not more confusing. You type everyone’s name in age groups on a simple spreadsheet (excel) or something similar. When they weigh-in you have someone record weights on a printed out sheet when weigh-ins end those weights can be type in by one person in less then 10 minutes. Better yet you have a computer for each age group and it can be finished in less then 5. You type the weights in on the computer next to their name and the spread sheet will sort them by weight in less then one second. Decide how many matches you want per wrestling surface and print out the names and ages according to the surface number. With 500 kids at a tournament all in 5 man round robins that is only 100 brackets give or take a few because of age groups. Even if only 5 people write those by hand that is 20 brackets each. In most cases you can get twice that many helping and the bracketing even by hand could be done in less then 1 hour. Or if you are a trackwrestling fan like I am this is all done by the parameters you set on the computer and it makes the bracket and numbers them for you, then you print the 100 give or take a few brackets in less then 10 minutes. If you end weigh-ins at 7:30 you could have brackets posted by 8:45 and start wrestling by 9:00. Or better yet you have satellite weigh-ins and this is all done the night before and you post sample bracket and have all scratches reported by 8:00 AM the final brackets posted by 8:30 and start wrestling by 9:00. Yes their will always be mistakes or people not happy, but the kids are going to get 3 to 4 matches just about every time, and scratches will be very minimum. Go to a Blue Chip freestyle or Greco tournament they do it all the morning of. Weigh-in by 8:00 and start wrestling by 10:00. True it is usually 300 wrestlers but they can do it with a lot less help then the normal kids club provides. I'm still open to other ideas as long as they get kids matches and eliminate scratches.

You should understand also that a lot of kids were taking a weekend off before Park City and gearing up for their state runs. Kids don't have to wrestle five matches every weekend for experience. Practice should help as well. Just my opinion. We ended up in four man round robins this weekend. My kids were happy for the break.

Back when my boys started GR/FS it was almost all done the morning of the tournament. You showed up weighted in and got grouped. But most of those tournaments were 200-300 not 500+. I'm sure there must be a way to make block work for larger tournaments using a good exel program of some sort.

Trackwrestling has a great block program. Weigh the kids in, tell it how big you want the brackets, set the max weight % you want them grouped and let it do it's thing.

That would be rare to have 7 D's and 3 A's. My boys are in 6 and under where this late in the season really nobody is a beginner or novice. Let a computer fill out the brackets so then nobody can blame human opionion and parents will not be allowed to mislead.

I disagree, there are a LOT of kids that are still novice. They will be in three weeks and will be next year.


Most of the bracketing done on computers is done based on human opinion...as in the separation criteria defined by each tournament sent in with each registration. Many times this is used to separate the kids within a bracket and not necessarily use to "seed" the bracket. For most, I believe separation is enough. I know others want to see their name at the top of the bracket, or opposite of that name depending on your situation.

If you are referring to the function within trackwrestling that allows you to seed according to your trackwrestling profile; I haven't seen many use this for seeding purposes. It's an interesting concept and one I could see that working, especially if all wrestlers had their results available...attended only TW events. I believe even this has it's own flaws and the only way to truly sort it out, is on the mat.

just a thought, the six and unders that want to go to subs will wrestle up to eight and under. My six and under has wrestled the last three tournaments at eight and under for competition and to see what he has to look forward to at subs.

I agree with the fact of rating your kid where they should be. If your kid has won lots of matches and only lost a couple they should not be ranked as a c or d.

A long time ago (about 10 years ago), we lived 9 miles from the Nebraska border so attended a lot of tournaments in that state. Nebraska has their own rules and procedures for their kids tournaments and one of those is "block" wrestling. They also had most of the tournaments in a split-format which works hand-in-hand with block wrestling in my opinion.

Here is how they did it. The younger wrestlers (10 and under) were in the morning and the older wrestlers (HS and under) were in the afternoon. Weigh-in for the younger would be from 6:30-8:00 with wrestling starting at 9:00. The older group could come at anytime to weigh in after the younger ones were done but the scales would be closed at noon with wrestling for them starting at 1:00.

After all the wrestlers were weighed in, the brackets would be made with the closest 4 weights in one group....basically Block Wrestling. If there were more than 4 who were the same weight, then they would have an A and a B bracket.

Sounds great.....but not without it's own set of problems. There were some wrestlers (mostly in either the lighter or heavier side) who had to wrestle other kids who were up to 10 pounds heavier than them. And then lets say that you have 9 kids who all weigh within one or two pounds of each other but then have a jump where the next closest weight was 8 pounds heavier. Who decides on which kid gets moved into the bracket with the heavier kids? The one who is a better wrestler (A) or the wrestler (D) that just happened to be weighed on a scale that puts him 1/2 ounce heavier than the others?

And even with the Block scheduling, there were still some brackets that only had 2 or 3 kids in it because of the rule that you can't wrestle a kid who weighs more than X amount than you.

So even Block Scheduling has it's problems.

conspiracy theory!! I saw a shirt this weekend. Winners train, losers complain.