I have decided that we would be better off without the dedicated novice division. As a club director explaining to people when is a good time to move from novice has always been my biggest headache. I have a pretty simple rule, 2 years max in novice then its time to be open. People make way to big of deal about moving their kids into the open division. It would seem that operating tournaments with Trackwrestling, we should be able to separate kids better. That being said, people entering the kids need to be honest and know what the level of the kid being entered is. If we would eliminate the novice division then wouldn't there be more inexperienced kids to wrestle each other in the tournaments. If we had a standardized ranking system that was set in Trackwrestling for us to use would that help separate the 1st yr kid from the state placer? Below is a ranking system for a tournament our club attends that doesn't call itself an open or a novice. Its simply a tournament and they want everyone to attend. Using the ranking system is crucial to get the kids in the right brackets. From what I can tell it seems to work pretty good. Just a thought as I have had lots of conversations about this over the years.

A= State qualifier
B= Good (usually places)
C= Experienced
D= Beginner 1st year