For subs, if there are 15 kids in a bracket, who gets the bye? Is it the top seed?

yes, the #1 seed would get the bye.

THANK YOU!!!

According to the National Federation rule book all byes are random draws. We use to always give the byes to the top seeds but I don't think so anymore. Am I wrong?

Randy,

It depends on how far the district went in seeding the bracket. I believe that most of the districts seed all of the wrestlers, in which case there aren't any random draws, and the top seed would get the first bye. It sounds like District 1 doesn't seed all of the wrestlers, so if new_at_this is from your district, the answer would be different.

If most districts seed all the wrestlers, why aren't we doing that in District 1? My son's bracket only has the top 4 seeded. We were told the rest would be drawn. So it's not an automatic bye for the #1 seed. (Which is actually good for us because my son's the #3 and he has a possibility to get a bye on the draw- but will the #1 feel that's unfair?) Why aren't we doing it like all the other districts?
Just curious.

even if all wrestlers are seeded unless numbers come out exactly 8 16 or 36 you will have byes which by rule should be drawn

Actually, I believe the rule is that byes can be placed by mutual consent or by draw. When the districts take the time to seed all of the wrestlers, they have de facto determined where the byes will be located by mutual consent.

Why worry about who gets a bye? Do you really want your kid getting a bye into the finals, or any other time for that matter? Every match you wrestle makes you that much better, I know as a wrestler I specifically asked Coach Christner to make sure I didn't get a bye even thought I was seeded #1 at even tournament from the middle of my sophmore year on. And it is becuase I wanted to wrestle. As a coach I try not to give any of my kids byes if I can help it because they definatly need the experiance.

What do you do with 18 wrestlers in a bracket? Do you use a 32 man bracket?

The reason you worry about who gets the bye is because you want the placement of byes to be uniform throughout the State. No one disagrees that the really good wrestler probably doesn't want a bye, however the decision shouldn't be in the wrestlers hands. There should be a uniform way to set the byes in a bracket and that should be followed. If a wrestler has the ability to say "I don't want a bye" then he is in effect manipulating the bracket. It may be time for the State Body to adopt some definite rules on seeding and the placement of byes (if in fact there are no definite rules in place)

i said nothing about wanting a bye my son got one and we would have rather drawn for a match

I think drawing them in is a good idea. Thats what is done with the high schools and it always seems to work fine. However, I think that the byes need to be set by even on each section of the bracket(say a sixteen man bracket has four byes there should be one in each quarter)

Okay, this got alot of attention. I guess that I will answer to some other things that have been brought up. Yes, we are in district 1, north subs to be exact. My daughter is the second seed in her bracket and the whole reason for the question was that I thought that the top seed ususally got it, but was just checking because it has not proven to be a good thing for her to have a first round bye this year. There are 15 kids supposedly in this bracket, but that may be knocked down to 13 by now due to illness or injury. When there were 15 kids, obviously it would have been a 16-man with one bye. Now that the numbers may have changed, so has the situation, but I guess that we will see for sure in the morning. Thanks again to all who answered so quickly!