My son is brand new to wrestling and my experience with bracketing is softball...double elimination appears not to mean the same thing in wrestling as it does in softball.

After reviewing the forms section of this web site and looking at an 8 man bracket, I have a question. My son is in an age/wt division with only 6 district qualifiers and is #2 seed. How does this work? Not a round robin, right? I believe the #1 seeds will receive a bye the 1st round, but it appears that if my son wins his first round as a #2 seed and then loses to the #1 seed that he would have to then wrestle a loser of the first round...and that loser will have received a bye for the 2nd round...so my son will be wrestling for the third time (after winning the first round) against a loser of the first round who will be wrestling for only the second time.

Another question, the only way to get 1st is not to lose, right? In softball, you have the opportunity for a rematch until one participating team has lost two times, so you can win 1st even though you lose a game.

Thank you for your help...I've been watching for the District brackets, but haven't been able to locate them, so I thought I'd satisfy my curiosity with this post.

Good Luck to everyone at District!!

I believe you have it laid out correctly. In wrestling, the only way to get first is not to lose at all. The only way to get 2nd, is only to lose in the finals against 1st. Once you have sustained your 1st loss of a tournament, you then go to the "backside" of the bracket. If you do not lose anymore matches on the "backside", you take 3rd. Unless the tournament is placing 5th & 6th place, once you have lost your second match, you are done with the tournament.

Occassionally, at some of the national tournaments, the 3rd place wrestler will be given the opportunity to wrestle the 2nd place finisher - if he has not already lost to that wrestler at that tournament. They do not offer that option for KS State, or any of the regular KS tournaments as far as I know.

To clarify on , you can lose in the backside finals (not semis) to the 3rd place finisher and still move on to state as the 4th seed from your district. The losers of the backside semis wrestle for 5th and 6th (which do not move on to state).

Ok, thanks for the confirmation on the double elimination question.

As far as the 8-MAN bracket layout with 6 wrestlers and the BYES--so I am correct in that the loser of the first round will receive his own bye for the second round on the left side of the bracket and will be wrestling for only the second time in the third round against a kid coming from the right side of the bracket who will be wrestling for the third time?

Wouldn't the 5th or 6th placers move on if one of the 1st-4th placers were unable to due injury or illness? Otherwise, why wrestle for 5th & 6th? Other than the mat time experience of course.

Just remember that if you loose in the semi-finals on the front side that you cross bracket to the backside. So if you were on the topside, you will cross to bottom of backside or bottom to topside.

The way it has been explained to me in the past (which I've been in MO USA for the last 6 years) is that if one of the top 4 kids do not sign up to go to state right after Districts, then a club rep for the 5th place kid can stick around to the end and put him in the #4 seed position and move the other seeds up to fill the vacancy, and the 6th place kid is next in line if the 5th placer did not take the spot. It's rare that it happens this way, but I have heard that it does happen every now and then. If anyone else has insight on this, I'm sure they could shed a little more light on it.

As for the original question about the way the byes play out, it depends on how many kids are from each sub... if there are 3 from each, then the #1 kids get byes and the #2 and 3's have to wrestle first round and recieve byes in the 2nd round on the backside, but will have to wrestle the loser of the semis from the opposite sides (top front semi loser moves to bottom backside semis and vice versa), so you are not guaranteed a 3rd or 4th place spot if there are 2nd round byes on the backside, and some kids will only have to wrestle once to be in the backside semis compared to wrestling twice before the backside semis if you win the first match. Now if there are 4 from one sub and 2 from the other, then there is a possibility that you could lose your first match and be in the backside finals, but that's only if they seed it according to the District bracket key... but there's a possibility that the District organizer will equal the sides out to prevent that from happening. Hope this helps!

In reply to TCSW Dad: There are 3 wrestlers from each subdistrict in my son's wt/age division. I guess I'm just being one of those anxious parents...my son is very excited to have a chance to go to State his first year in wrestling, and I'm hoping everything turns out. Looking at the potential brackets, I'm just concerned that the rounds will be so close together that should my son win the first round and lose the second round to the #1 seed, he could end up having to wrestle a more rested first round loser during the third round even though that wrestler comes into the tournament seeded 3rd and lost the first round. Just call me a worrier....Thanks again for the information.