My son has an October birthday so he has a good Kansas wrestling birthday but not so good for Missouri with the January 1 cutoff. We live in the Kansas City area so he has wrestled a lot of Missouri tournaments over the last couple of years. He was wrestling 12 & under for Kansas this year but had to wrestle 14 & under for Missouri. He is a 7th grader now so I think he is getting to the age where this is not that significant anymore. He did not lose a Missouri tournament this year and faced several 8th graders including some Kansas 14 & unders in doing so. Two years ago I do not believe that he could have done that and it probably is more of a factor the younger the wrestler is. But like others have stated someone is going to suffer no matter how you set it up. I like our cutoff because it seems to go with the school year and how the schools do their cutoff.