Hey guys,

Just want to clear something up about the Montana system of using the varsity and jv to qualify for state.....

The reason MT does that for their AA schools (same as 6A in KS) is because they only have 13 AA schools. So in order to have full 16 man brackets at the state tournament, that is the system they implemented. Way back in the OLD days (when I was there) we had 16 AA teams and we only took varsity wrestlers to the state tournament.

Having said that, when I first saw the system I was skeptical of it. I thought the same things about going overboard to let everyone qualify, etc. Once I saw it in action, I changed my opinion, mainly because I saw how it helped in a lot of cases on reducing the weight cutting. For example, if a team had 2 of the top kids in the state at one weight, they would wrestle one up a weight for the majority of the season. At state they would put both wrestlers at the same weight. This really helped the kid that was one of the top 2 wrestlers in the state in that he could still place at the state tournament, yet he didn't have to wrestle up a weight or try to really cut to make the next lower weight.

Shawn Budke