Track wrestling had nothing to do with starting late today. The issue with starting late, was due to the fact that there seem to be so many club directors or secretaries or whomever is turning in the kids ages and weights, that don't put the correct age or weight on the entry sheets.
It never seems to amaze me, how many parents go to the head table to yell at the tournament operators, when 95% of the time, the err that they are complaining about was sent in that way. Tournaments can only operate on the information sent to them by the clubs submitting it. However, as any of you that have ever run a tournament know, that is never an exuse as the tournament is always wrong, never the parents or the person that turned in their entry. (on that note), I do want to say that after having words with one of those parents, they were very gracious to come back and apologize when they were shown the entry that actually came in. We appreciate that, it takes a lot sometimes to do that.
As for track wrestling..... they advised us several.. several times not to make or print brackets ahead of time. However, given parents responses in the past to not having brackets, we printed them anyway. We didn't have any issues with this, and in fact it isn't as big of an issue as people think. There is a lock out "freeze" function, that locks all of the bout numbers. Once you change a bracket, it resets the numbers to a ?, it is very easy to then go back in and only renumber those brackets changed, not the entire tournament or mat.
Printing brackets ahead of time, was not the issue with starting late. It was a combination of factors, that any tournament that has ever ran has faced. Wrong age, weights, and rankings on kids, and those that didn't make weight or show up that we had to scratch to make sure kids could wrestle.
Little known to parents and anyone else that doesn't actually run the tournament, there are tons of issues that tournaments face. We were up til 2:30 last night and up at 5:30 this morning to get things done. During this we made over 25 changes to weights and ages and rankings that we reprinted on blue paper to note the changes. This morning we had another 8-10 kids come in that were entered incorrectly. We could have started on time, however we chose to try and accomodate those with these issues of being sent in incorrectly. IF we hadn't and we had just said tough luck,.. then you would be writing about us saying how big of jerks we were for not making adjustments for just this ONE kid.
Why is it that we always read about how terrible a tournament runs, and we read about all of the problems, however, I seldom see posts like.... Hey, thanks for taking care of us and getting us in the correct spot...even though it wasn't your fault. Many tournaments only make changes if they actually make the mistake.
There are many thoughts and options for using this system, Friday night weigh ins only, absolutely NO changes.. period. We could do this for hours. Bottom line is,.. it wasn't the computer system. We have done this several ways, and this was by far the easiest. IF anyone is planning on using this in the future, I would be more then happy to help and answer questions, all you have to do is ask.
As for not posting entries on line. This was exactly as mentioned above... we learned from Douglass that the moment they posted the list, they started getting phone calls to move little Johny up a weight because he couldn't make the weight. "bottom line, truth be told, most of the calls were because little Johny couldn't beat the kids at the original weight.
We didn't want or anticipate to start late either, but you end up just having to make a choice? Do you accomodate people, or do we hold steady and tell them tough luck. We'll never have the correct answers, and someone will always complain no matter which way you go.
Best of luck to evers turn it is to get yelled at next week.