Normally I list my cutoff date 4-6 days before the tournament. This year our cutoff date was the day after Christmas with the tournament on the 29th. That was 3 days before the tournament. (not a lot of time to get all 975+ entries bracketed and ready, but luckily I have that week off as do a lot of volunteers within the club). This is the main reason we have our tournament during the holidays like we do. This year Christmas fell on a Tuesday and next year is looking dreadful with Christmas on a Thursday. My point is that it takes a lot of work to get ready for a tournament thus the reason for having the cutoff date so far in advance of the tournament. Maybe we should go to more of a Freestyle/Greco type tournament where there is no pre-registration and you just show up, weigh-in, get bracketed by random draw, then start wrestling. The only problem with that system is that it may take a longer time to get the brackets made up depending upon the number of wrestlers that show up.

I am just glad I am not the only one that feels this way about scratches at tournaments.