What is the reason for submitting a kid's weight class two weeks in advance and then holding them to that? We had a kid show up two pounds heavy and he got the opportunity to run it off while the rest of us went out and ate breakfast. I know in high school it is important to maintain your weight class but we should be encouraging kids to grow. Why can't the kids be put in brackets after weigh ins? When I wrestled free style 20 years ago we never pre-registered. You showed up, weighed in, and wrestled. With computers today, I would think that bracketing could be accomplished in a few minutes after everyone weighed in. I think it is nice to have pre-registration two weeks in advance, but I don't think making a kid lose weight to wrestle is good for anyone. Cutting weight was the worst part of wrestling for me. I would hate to lose any kids from wrestling because this is the way that it has always been done.

Most freestyle tournaments are still run this way, but bracketing a several hundred kid tournament in an hour would be impossible. Also, most tournament signups end on Tuesday before the Tournament (4 days)and most allow weight changes by phone up until the signin cutoff.

I am not smart enough to run a tournament. I wish I was. I was just looking for ideas to discourage small children from dehydrating themselves to meet an arbitrary weight. Personally I would wrestle my kids up a weight at pre-registration if they are even close. I would rather have them be at a few pound disadvantage then spend the morning running. Maybe I am living in a dream world, but technology seems like it should be able to help crank out the brackets. It seems like every tournament adjusts for last minute scratches, why is this so much different?

in my experience, whenever we let the computers and or software programs run things regarding brackets and tournaments something always seems to go wrong, either be it the system goes down, or some other glitch. Until the technology gets proven to be failsafe, most tournament directors will be wary of using the technology.

I appreciate the comments. After practice last night the same kid was two pounds overweight again. I asked our club president if she could put him in at the higher weight for the tournament this weekend at Maize. She said that she tried to get his weight class changed and was told that it could not be done. It was submitted by the deadline shown on the flier. We have another practice this week and maybe he will be lighter this weekend. I am not advocating throwing out the current system, I just think there should be some flexibility. My kids are wrestling for their first year and are really enjoying the sport. I do not want my seven year old to be worrying about is weight since he was 1-1/2 pounds over last night as well. My kids will not cut weight. We will put him in the next weight class for the following tournament.

You know 1 or 2 pounds is not bad for being overweight in your bracket, because they can cut the weight a couple of days before or run it off that morning and then they go and pig out cuz they are hungry and gain it all back, the only time it really should be an issue, is at subs, dist. and state.

Discipline is one thing wrestling taught me. Now I don't believein making kids cut weight but having them understand that they have responsibilities is a good thing

paretns that psh their kids to cut are hurting the sport- wrestle what you weigh be on the safe side when entering them

Please don't let any of your kids cut more than a pound. A 70lb kid losing 2lbs is losing 2.9% of his weight. Why? I can personally attest to losing way too much weight throughout my career. It limits your ability. Wrestle up.

Thanks for the advice. My son wrestles 49 pounds and I don't want him to cut one ounce. It is a big accomplishment to break the 50 pound barrier. I will wrestle him up the rest of the season. Unfortunately this weeks tournament was already submitted prior to this growth spurt. Based on my conversation with our club president, the club running the tournament will not allow any changes even well in advance. If he loses the weight over night on Friday, he will wrestle Saturday. If not, we can go to the YMCA and shoot baskets.

Ok lets clear up a few things here.

The idea of cutting weight has several reasons as to why it is done. In several years past the reason why some wrestlers cut weight was to find a varsity spot where they could win challenge matches and compete. If you are on a team where the Varsity wrestler in your natural weight class is a 3 time state champion, it makes sense for you to cut 5-10 pounds down to the next weight and challenge the guy there that might not be as good.

However over time the idea of weight cutting was that you would be more "competitive" or be in better shape if you cut some fat and water weight off. Whether or not this is true is a big subject of debate. If you are truly a good wrestler you don't need to cut weight to be sucessfull. The only otehr time I see this being a problem if you are the type of wrestler who pigs out on food when wrestling season in not on.

I don't personally believe that werstlers in Kids wrestling, up to the 14 & U, age group ever need to cut weight. 14 & U kids usually fall into the middle school, high school range where they are fighting for spots on the varsity team. However if you are kid wrestling in kids wrestling there really isn't a need for it. Some parents of the younger kids are giving the sport a bad image by dieting their kids because they think going down 3 pounds is going to give them a huge advantage. I think you will find that if a kid is truely tough, he will do well at his natural weight.

Bottom line here is:

If your kids are 12 years old or younger, DON'T make them try to cut weight, because you are doing them a huge disfavor. When they get to 13, 14 or older let them decide if they want to cut a few pounds or not.

I 100% agree with William. I lost 38 lbs my senior year in high school. I wanted to wrestle a 3 time state champ. Bad idea. My body was so weak I never faced him. In fact the weight above me was won by one of my teammates who I could destroy. Let your child enjoy the sport at his/her natural weight. As William said maybe 5-10lbs if taken off slowly. Get your kids body fat checked first.

I have no intention of having my son cut weight. He is as skinny as a rail already. I agree that cutting weight, especially for kids, is not good. I started this post to see if someone had a better plan for kids that show up for a tournament and did not make weight. Most kids tournaments require that a club submit their roster and weights well in advance with no ability to make changes. Fortunately kids are growing even during wrestling season. Since most tournaments make changes to the brackets for scratches, would it be possible to move a kid up a weight instead of making him lose the weight? If he does not make weight, he then becomes a scratch anyway. Does making changes for scratches involve a lot less work than moving a kid into a different weight class? I hope someone can figure out a better way. Thanks!

If you cut out all the junk food and salt, you might be surprised to see how easy it is to maintain your wrestling weight. It's all about living and eating healthy. Most kids and parents do not know what healthy food is. It's not necessarily no fat, no sugar, but if you just watch salt intake it will help.

I have been to tournaments where kids who did not make weight, were allowed to enter the weight they did make for an additional entry fee.

You hate to send a wrestler home for not making weight, but it really isn't fair to let him in when all the other wrestlers made their weight. The extra entry fee helps keep them honest.

I remember wrestlers at Tulsa Nationals used to enter at two weights, in case they didn't make the lower weight, they could still wrestle one weight up. They do not allow this anymore.

I am running the Stafford Co. Wrestling Club Tournament this Weekend (Feb. 18). My Husband has made a computer program to create all the brackets or round robins which is the easy part. You still have to divid out each mat with match numbers and make sure a wrestler is not wrestling before there loted time between matches. This is really hard on a small tourney. We started at 6:30 Wed. night and at 9:30 we were not completly done yet. This is a touney that only as about 150 kids. There is a lot of time and effort that goes into these tourney's. I don't like the idea of kids cutting weight but I don't know that it is very possible to do the day of the tourney. But I always thought that we could do weigh ins at our own weight room. High School kids weigh in before they leave to go to a touney at there own school except for State Touney. I don't know that this is the solution but it is an idea.

The biggest problem that a tournament director has with kids changing weights at weigh ins, at least that I have seen, is the time needed to change all of the brackets, bout sheets, mat assignments, allotted time between matches, and other intangibles. Just last weekend, at the Derby tournament we gave ourselves an hour to make bracket changes after the morning weigh ins to account for any scratches. we had a system down that worked very well and we were able to start the tournament pretty much on the time that we stated on our flyer. This is one of the main reasons that tournament directors dislike making weight changes at weigh ins because of the time involved, and we all have been to tournaments that have started 1, 2, sometimes even 2 1/2 hours late due to bracket changes being made. A wrestling tournament is long enough without having to wait that extra bit in the beginning to get things started.

Also, most local tourneys will have a night before weigh in as well as the morning weigh in. If you are not travelling a long distance, try to make the night before's weigh in. I know when we travelled down to Blackwell this year I took 5 kids with me to weigh in the night before the tournament just so we didn't have to get up so early in the morning to weigh in.

I would be concerned that if we allow weight changes the morning prior more parents and kids would try for the lower weight division to gain that extra edge and if they don't make it, oh well. This may actually add to the number of wrestlers cutting weight instead of being safe and wrestling up. My son is always 1.5 to 2 pounds under, but I really haven't at all considered him trying to make lower weight since at 6U 43 he is rail thin already.

It will certainly add to the number of kids not making weight and in effect to the delays getting the tournament started. I understand tournament directors trying to find a place for kids that don't make weight BUT, the problem only perpetuates itself over time once people know you will do this.

This is the reason that the following is on our tournament flyer:
Taken from the Derby Flyer posted on the calendar of the USAWKS website
"Age / Weights: Scales will be digital. WE WILL NOT MAKE CHANGES TO BRACKETS IF THE WRESTLER DOES NOT MAKE WEIGHT."

most of the time a kid is cutting weight in a youth program they are being told to do so. We try to encourage developing a healthy weith during pre season and then maintaining that weight through a good diet and proper exercise. This can still be a problem with kids because of growth in children. As a coach I always tell parents if in doubt to move up, however I know for a fact this isn't always followed. Some parents try to cut several weight classes by qualifiers to find that competetive edge. Most of the time the child suffers mentally due to the stress. If they get to where they are competetive they start having melt downs due to excessive pressure. AS far as bracketing day of... that would be great but you cant weigh in until 8:30 and start by 9:00. It is impossible even with the cpu programs. That scenario usually goes bad. They biggest problem is shaving weight until subs and then having to weigh at night for state. I encourage a 1 to 2 pound buffer just to be safe. Just my 2 cents