Beeson,
I think you are a great ambassador for wrestling but, I do not think I could disagree with you more about TrackWrestling.

The key to the weigh in situation is that each tournament has to have atleast 1 to 1.5 hrs between the end of weigh-ins and the start of wrestling.

That means that IF you are going to allow Saturday morning weigh-ins you should go from 6 to 7 with a planned start time of 8:30.

This allows time for the printing of all brackets and the bout cards.

The sequencing of rounds and how they occur can be controlled by the tournament director.

At the Valley Center open tournament earlier this year we recognized that the default setting for rounds did not conform the the traditional method seen in Kansas Kids. We adjusted it to so that it did function the way we are used to seeing.
I will note that I believe that at most National tournaments the rounds are set up the way that is defaulted in TrackWrestling.

I have utilized TrackWrestling in atleast 4 tournaments this year. Each time I use it I found better and more efficient methods to use the software.

I can say that probably the single biggest mistake a tournament can do is to assign mat numbers and bout numbers before all the weigh-ins have completed. If you have a lot of scratches it takes too long to re-number the bouts.

You have one of two options.
You can re-number every bout on the affected mat and reprint all the affected brackets and bout numbers.
You can manually renumber the bouts and hope that the time and pressure of wanting to get started does not cause you to number them incorrectly. I will note that in a case where the bracket type changes, there may not be any numbers available to change into. Case in point an eight man bracket that has been changed to a four man round robin. In this case there is only one match in the first round of the eight-man bracket but there are two matches in the first round of a four-man round robin.

I guess the bottom line is that if tournaments are not willing to have an open mind and spend some time learning how to use the system, they will not be successful using it.

During three tournaments we utilized the TrackWrestling weigh-in cards to manage weigh-ins. Each tournament we got better at the process. Friday night we weighed-in around 495 wrestlers within 1 hr and 20 minutes. We did have a few stragglers but the bulk happend during that first surge. We had exactly ONE wrestler for the entire tournament that was a problem. He took his card home and did not turn it in.

Once again I learned something from even this process. Next year we will have a weight check scale outside the weigh-in room so that kids can spot check their weights prior to getting into line. Hopefully this will enable them to recognize being over and start working it off earlier.

I think that TrackWrestling is by far the best computer application on the market.

I hope you do not find this offensive. I am only trying to share my knowledge and experience with regard to this situation.

Remember as a society we can not get better and we can not improve unless we are willing to change and adapt to our surroundings.

Steven