Well I will take the blame - specially the 6 & under 37 issue that Jointboys discussed. We also had 60 to 80 changes unrelated to our data entry of the kids information. 60 to 80 changes means changing the headtable bracket, the scorers table bracket, the bout sheets, the wall bracket, what that really means that there is 240 to 320 (possibly 480 to 640 if they all move to another age and weight)things that have to be corrected before the tournament can start - IT IS not just as simple as changing one name and one number. I have been going to kids tournaments for around 20 -25 years. You know what - the people who complain at these tournaments I rarely see them in a volunteer position.
Moving a 12 & under 76 (wrong signup by someone) out of a bracket to and 8 & under 76 bracket so those kids can at least wrestle a kid or kids their own age requires the changing of eight brackets - 2 head table brackets, 2 scorers table brackets, 2 wall brackets, and 2 sets of bout cards. - That is moving just 1 kid. It is very important for parents and club sign up people to get the kids in the correct spot. DO NOT COMPLAIN IF YOU HAVE EVER EVER SIGNED YOUR KID UP WRONG.
With around 400 - 1000 kids at a tournament - you do the math on the possible corrections that might be needed. We had an estimated 984 volunteer hours to put on this tournament. That translates into one person working a forty hour week for 24 and a half weeks. We had 23 kids sign up for the open 6 & under. We have talked about doing 1 - 6 and under group and 1 group of 14 & under. The 6 & under really makes sense to me. The 14 & under I have more questions about that. But most of those kids will be entering high school and need to find out what the competition will be like their freshman year in high school. Anyway - I apologize if it did not work out perfectly for every kid and their parents. If the world had an even distribution of age and weight of kids it would make bracketing a little easier. As far as round robin only matches - you can run into the same problem -if we would have set them up as 4 man or 5 man. I think 6 & under 43 had 32 kids. That is 8 - 4 man brackets. What if in 3 of those brackets only 2 guys each showed up in each of those brackets. You Are All Correct make 2-3 man round robins. Very good but it does take time to make those changes. If it is done all electronically and we would use TRACKWRESTLING software. It renumbers the entire age on that mat so we would have to take down ALL the wall brackets in the hall and repost them ALL as well as ALL new scorers table brackets, ALL head table, ALL bout sheets, etc. So do you want us to post the brackets for the whole tournament only 5 minutes before the start. Oh by they way that is approximately 220 brackets that everybody in the gym will have to run to the hall to see the NEW NUMBERS of their kids matches. That might not meet fire code with 2 gyms in the hall. If one club who sent in 8 entries and had one wrong entry that is 12.5% of the entries sent in wrong. 12.5% of 1000 entries is 125 total wrong entries. If all of these kids are in one of the different 220 brackets then over half of the brackets would have to be changed on the wall, at each table packet, the head table, and the bout sheets. Anyway - we did our best and thanks to all the volunteers to make it possible for these kids to have a little fun, see some buddies and have a little competition on the weekend.

Sincerely,

Sean McCarthy
STA Kids Club