I have talked about this before. It is not the kids who decide to FF or move their weights for a better advantage. It is the adults. What happened to the sport. Are the adults so competative that we can't let the kids wrestle and have a good time. Do professionals FF to get advantages or the other side of the bracket? We adults should let our kids be kids! Win if they can and teach them to lose. There are far to many kids who don't know how to lose and do it gracefully. Seen alot of throwing head gear, bad hand shakes and more. Let's make it fun again. It takes a bigger person to lose the match and we all know there is only one winner to each match.

At the D1 tourny this weekend I FF my sons match for 3rd/4th. Not that I feel that I owe anybody an explination, just giving my reasons since this is the thread topic. Kolton went into Districts #1 seed. His very good friend and team mate Triston Hopkins was the #2 seed.

Kolton won his 1st match and then lost his 2nd match. I was somewhat relieved that we would not have to meet Hopkins again before state. Its tough enough to have to wrestle a good kid, let alone your good friend and team mate.

Then as fate would have it Hopkins suffered an unexpected loss in his 2nd match. Both boys went on to win their 3rd match! Guess what? Now they have to meet for 3rd/4th.

Kolton had the good fortune of winning against Hopkins twice during the year, it was just a difficult spot to be in. I'm sure others have experienced it.

I made the decision to scratch Kolton based on the following thought process.

1) They had already qualified for state.
2) Both kids from the same club. Club stats will not change. Still sending 2 more to state.
3) I didn't think that finishing 3rd over 4th was worth a possible injury.
4) Both boys had already suffered unexpected upsets earlier in the day, why subject either one to an additional loss. (remember they are team mates)
5) Kolton was ok with letting his friend have 3rd and looking ahead to state.

Right or wrong? I just didn't think there was enough to gain from the match to warrant subjecting the friends to a loss at that time. If it comes down to 3rd/4th or 5th/6th at STATE you bet those boys will wrestle their butts off.

If you all knew the real reasoning for this, you wouldn't be so worried about making a thread about it. This decision was made by the child, not by the parents.

This is what threads are for to discuss and understand things. Now everyone knows why HE scratched his son. I think what he did was very reasonable due to his circumstances. He don't need anyone's approval but it sure did help to clear up his side of their stategy and prevention of possible injury and upset. If you look at the bracket it does look a little funny though. It looks like they (both boys) wanted to be 3rd and 4th. They would have qualified either way so it really don't make that much difference. It just changes the seedings.