Randy, Jason, Will and anyone else familiar with matside weigh-ins I am curious of a few things.

I can’t help think this would be a logistic nightmare. Using Derby as an example, we had 12 mats, we do not have 12 scales available and to borrow these would add just another thing to the list. Should we share scales between mats, wouldn’t this delay matches? And what happens when someone doesn’t make it? Do they forfeit just that match or are they scratched out of the tourney? Doesn't this also create a problem with warm ups for the competitor and the matches following? I am not against it just not familiar with the flow of the tournament utilizing it.

Randy, I would agree with you that the emphasis should be on wrestling not the weight and again not being familiar with grouping kids together in a folkstyle tourney, only the laid back-smaller freestyle tournaments, I am curious how much this would delay the start of the tourney considering the bracket preparation. I guess this could be done with Friday night weigh-ins also.

IMO, the perfect tourney is as follows.

Everyone remotely weighs-ins Friday night (supervised) thus minimizing the time and expense. Everyone makes weight or realizes they need to move up. No one cheats, tries to switch or manipulates the system.
Brackets are prepared Friday night and released asap via trackwrestling or otherwise.
The tourney starts on time.
The tourney allows double entries, wrestling up etc.
The tourney ends at a reasonable time.
Oh and lastly, the bathrooms are clean with adequate paper products.

One more thing I could have all clubs weigh the wrestlers at thursday practice & e mail us their actual weight I would be willing to try this. What do you think? You would not have to weigh in at tounament site at all!! I do have to clear this with the coaches & parents, but this is How I would like to do it.

Mike, we used remote weigh-ins last year for those teams that had a distance to travel. I emailed a form to record the actual weights, they were emailed it back to me, but I also requested that the head coach sign off on the original and bring it the day of the tournament. Then on the day of the tournament, the kids who used the remote weigh-in checked in at the head table and had their skin checked at that time. We plan on doing this again this year. We also offered Saturday night weigh-ins, which we will be doing again this year, but not as many people utilized this. I think we advertised it too late last year. It was nice to have several actual weights the night before.

BLT,

That was me that made the comment about the refs....please understand that I made the comment jokingly. It was not meant to be taken seriously.....of course having referees supervise the remote weigh ins will bring credibility to the process.

As far as debating between remote weigh ins, matside weigh ins, or blocking......heck I think all of them are better than what we do now. I say this coming from the perspective of making things easier and less expensive for the parents, less time consuming and helping tournaments run more efficiently.

I think all of these ideas are great. It would be fun to see different tournaments try them.

Shawn Budke

In regards to the remote weigh-ins in which the tournaments we've wrestled in Oklahoma and Missouri -- everyone seems to appear very honest and we're all having a great day of wrestling rather than holding up the line trying to weigh in first thing that morning.

There is a spot on our entry form for actual weight and entered weight. Haven't seen any potential fudging going on. Just getting there to wrestle and having a great crowd and a big bracket and having a FUN day.

Having just gone through the tournament where over 60 clubs sent in their wrestlers weights, which I only hope they had a chance in their wrestling room to confirm what was entered, I would say there had to be no less than 50 incorrect weights, (of the 700 entries), that made a difference in what weight class they would have competed in.

One was an incredible 50 lbs. off!! :-)

Couldn't you just see that matchup as they walked onto the mat?!

You had better verify the weights somehow.

Jeff

Jeff,

I understand what you are saying but I don't think we can use that as a realistic comparison. The reason I say that is because of the different level of concern a club would have on a kids weight if they were responsible for reporting the weight.

For example, in our club we try and check the kids weights but we leave it up to the parents as to what weight their kids will wrestle. We also explain to the parents and kids that if they don't make weight they won't wrestle. Having said that, we don't check their weight right before they go weigh in at a tournament.

If we did remote weigh ins then I would be weighing them on Friday night. If they weren't on weight then I would scratch them when I sent in the weights that night. It would save the tournament director's from having to scramble (like you so graciously did for one of our wreslters) to put them in a different weight class or deal with a lot of scratches on the day of the tournament.

Shawn Budke

Well that should settle it. Remote weigh in dont work! After hearing this we will have on site weigh in next year. This would mess up so many brackets It would take hours to fix. I dont think I want to take a chance on starting at noon. The old on site weigh in is not that bad of a system. If a wrestler is not at correct weight its simple to fix before tournament. After bracketing this is much more complicated.If any one has an idea how to to this without having this problem I would like to hear it. The great thing about on site weigh in is all mistakes are found BEFORE BRACKETING this is a must IMO. Thanks for the post Jeff.

So the kid cant wrestle because of a parent or coach mistake. We want to fix all mistakes & let all kids that show up wrestle. Jeff tried what everone wanted & It did not work! The rossville tournament will do whats right for the kids & all kidsthat are there & pass skin check will wrestle.

Well I think we are going to try to do some RWI at the Haysville tournament. We will set up a form and some criteria for verification and ket some of the clubs that are traveling (and that we trust) use it and we will see how it goes.
So if you are planning on coming to the Haysville tournament in Feb and would like to try to set up some RWI. Please PM me and we will see what we can work out!

Michael,

I dont think we turned any kids away because of weight. We used Trackwrestling and were able to have Friday Night weighins and then a short 1 hour weigh in on Saturday to get some that didnt want to travel the night before. We closed weighins down at 7:40am ( went 10 mins. long due to weather) and had brackets posted and printed for sale before 9:00am!

I am a firm believer in the Split Format!!!

Started wrestling at 9:00am and wrapped up the morning session( 6-8-14's) around 12:30 or so...( I think, was a little busy in comp. room ).

I will mention that because of the split format we do have late weighins for the PM session from 10:30am - 11:30am and all went fine.

Started the late session(10-12's) at 1:45pm and I think we were started cleaning about 6:30pm. Many were gone long before this time though.


Jeff

Jeff, My post was in response to Budkes post. I think you answered the question this thread is about. We can speculate all day what will happen & ignore what happend to you----or we can learn from your experience. Me personally I will just take your word for it & weigh in on site, unless some one figures out how to do this without the problem you had. 50 clubs---over 50% wrong weights this is two much error & nightmare for director & wrestlers & familys. Good for concession sales LOL.

Michael,

I must not have communicated effectively if you interpreted my post saying that remote weigh ins won't work. Personally I think your argument proves the necessity for remote weigh ins....let me give you a couple of examples based on some of the problems that Jeff mentioned....

1. Typo, coaches error, tournament director's error on weight class (the 50 lb example Jeff mentioned). If that was one of my kids and we were do remote weigh ins, as a coach I would have caught that on Fri night when we weighed in. Then I would have called Jeff and informed him of the mistake and given him the kids exact weight. No brackets would have been filled out yet and so (as in your own words) it would have been really easy to fix.

2. Kids weigh in over weight. If we were doing remote weigh ins on Friday night and the kids was over weight, as a coach, we would have 2 options available. The first would be to contact the tournament director and see if we could move him up. Shouldn't be a problem because the brackets aren't done yet (your words). The second option is to tell him he can't wrestle because he didn't make weight. Tournament director's call.

Now let me clarify about Jeff and Mill Valley....If my earlier post insuated in any way that kids didn't get to wrestle because they were over weight.....that is my mistake. This did not happen as far as I know. Jeff and the staff bent over backwards to ensure kids got to wrestle. What I was trying to convey was that is what we tell our parents can happen if kids don't make weight. We do this so kids that are close will hopefully move up to the next weight class. We do not support the kids cutting weight but ultimately that is up to the kids and their parents.

I don't think we want to throw the baby out with the bath water here. I think it is worth a try. I also think a lot of the problems that Jeff talks about would have probably been identified during remote weigh ins (I'm assuming here).

I do agree with Jeff that Split tournaments are the way to go.

Just my thoughts.

Shawn Budke

Hey Jeff,

How did you implement the remote site weigh in?

The no less than 50 incorrect weights you mentioned is way to many. Were the incorrect weights entry errors? If so, were they entered incorrectly by you guys, or were you given wrong weights by the clubs?

I personally think remote site weigh-ins can work. Here is what I am considering for our tournament.

option 1

1) Thursday night remote weigh-ins, skin checks, hair and nail checks for clubs who pre-register w/ TW.
2) Each club would e-mail me a list of their kids with their actual weight, and an acknowledgment that their skin,
hair, etc. was checked and passed.
3) I would then enter each kids actual weight
4) Saturday morning, 1hr 15min prior to the start of the tournament, we would have a quick coaches meeting where I
have a print off of each clubs roster. The club representative would check their roster and let me know if a
kid is going to be a scratch. This meeting shouldn't last more than 5 minutes. This would also give the club
a final look at their roster to make sure nothing was entered incorrectly so changes can be made.
5) Once I receive each clubs roster back, and make the necessary changes, it would just be a matter of getting your
tournament built.

option 2 (I'm leaning towards opt #2 if Justin confirms a couple questions I have regarding #2 below)

1) Thursday night remote weigh-ins, skin checks, hair and nail checks for clubs who will pre-register w/ TW.
2) There is a setting you can change to allow statisticians to enter the kids actual weight if you choose to not
have a friday/saturday weigh-in. This will allow the clubs when pre-registering to enter actual weight.
I just e-mailed Justin @ TW to make sure I am understanding the setting correctly.
3) Saturday morning, 1hr 15min prior to the start of the tournament, we would have a quick coaches meeting where I
have a print off of each clubs roster. The club representative would check their roster and let me know if a
kid is going to be a scratch. This meeting shouldn't last more than 5 minutes. This would also give the club
a final look at their roster to make sure nothing was entered incorrectly so changes can be made.
4) Once I receive each clubs roster back, and make the necessary changes, it would just be a matter of getting your
tournament built.

Does anyone see why this wouldn't work?

Good night!!


Greg Pelland
Pratt Wrestling Club
620-388-4294

clubs that try this please post on here how it went. I would like to know.

Not to pick on this one incident or any club in question, but for all those that say we should make sure every kid gets to wrestle each weekend regardless of the weight at which they were entered, you are only serving to cause more of these entry weight "errors". If there is no incentive for a club director/coach/parent to enter their wrestler at the correct weight then these types of "errors" will only continue to multiply over time. Until such time as we go to "block" wrestling we need to have strong enforcement of the entered weights and make sure that these types of problems are kept to a minimum. If we will start sending kids home who did not make weight and not "working them into a bracket" and holding up the entire tournament, you will see these types of "errors" decrease. As others have stated 50 weight "errors" are FAR too many and is totally unacceptable. Another way to combat this is for clubs to take full responsibility for the weights and entries of their wrestlers and not the parents.

The forms that we have used state the entered weight and the actual weight. Should not be an error here except for the person weighing the kid or the legibility of the handwriting.

I can't imagine the 50# mismatch if the entered weight was adjacent to the actual weight...would have been a red flag for someone.

Greg, I can foresee your 50 feet ahead of everyone as well as Michael....we've just not had any problems in this avenue. In Oklahoma they do desire that the arms are marked according to how they prefer. In Missouri they have the kids "check in" and have their arms marked. In any event things are sped up so incredible you can't imagine!

Greg,

As far as I know, Mill Valley did not do Remote Site Weigh Ins.

We had to weigh in at Mill Valley either on Friday evening, Sat morning or Sat around noon (depending on which session you were wrestling).

That is why I don't think we can use it as a comparison to a tournament that tries remote site weigh ins.

Sportsfan,

I agree with most of what you said, however, I don't think you can make clubs soley responsible for kids making weight. It has to be a team effort between the club and the parents. I do agree that block wrestling seems like it would solve a lot of these issues.

Shawn Budke

No, my point was to make the clubs responsible for the entries and tracking the weight of each wrestler. My guess is that most of these errors are as a result of parents taking care of their own weight records and/or entries. In our club each wrestler is weighed at the end of each practice and that weight is recorded by the club. When a parent comes in to sign-up for a particular tournament and asks what the kid has been weighing we can tell them. Then if they ask what weight to sign-up for we also offer advice based on the weight classes for that age group and how close the kid is to the next higher weight. Then that kid is entered in the tournament by a club director at that age and weight.

Thursday night skin checks may cause an issue - if something surfaces in the next 36 hours that did not show up Thursday night. Weigh ins - just need to be honest. I think we as clubs should do an alfa weight at the beginning of the season. We should be trying to prevent kids from bouncing up and down 7 to 15 pounds per week. This example is not the same thing but I lost 13 pounds in 8 hours in college and put it back on in 1.5 hours. College has implemented new rules since those days. That is all I have.