In a high school regional tournament with eight teams, how many wrestlers are seeded? I checked with the rules and found this information regarding byes and seeds.

When byes are required for the first round, they shall be placed by mutual consent or drawn so they are distributed evenly throughout the bracket. No quarter-bracket or half-bracket shall have more than one bye in excess of its paired bracket. After seeded wrestlers have been placed on the bracket and the byes drawn, remaining wrestlers shall be placed by draw.

My thought on an eight man bracket with one or more byes is that they would seed the top four and draw in the byes and remaining wrestlers. Is this correct or do they seed all wrestlers that are competing?

I am no expert, but it is my understanding that everyone with a winning record is seeded, that's it whether it is all 8 or only 1.

All winning records are elligible for a regional seed.

Scooter and RJW1, thanks for the input. I appreciate the feedback.

My only thoughts are that the byes should be drawn but evenly distributed.

Question. What is the critera for seeding a regional tournament? Where can I read more on this? Does a forfeit in a tounament count equal to an actual match?

From what I have found out, wrestlers with winning records can get seeded. Criteria is head to head first, then common opponent results next. If a wrestler has wrestled more than one weight, their records can be noted for each weight class. Forfeits count as a win and I believe that they count the same as a pin. Byes move the wrestler forward in the bracket but don't add points to the team total. If I am wrong on any of this, please chime in because I am only going with what I have read and have heard the last couple of days.

Things may have changed since I was coaching, which has been a few years, but we did not count forfeits at the regional seeding meeting. That might have changed but we did not do that up to at least 2002. Byes add advancement points if you win the next match. Say you bye first round but you win in the quarters, you get the advancement points for both rounds after the quarterfinal win.

Oh when I re-read your post I see maybe you are talking about forfeits as the forfeits that occur in the tourney itself and not those on their records. If that is what you are talking about I see what you are saying there. Yes they do count on the bracket if you win your next bout. Like I said, I am not current, and it has been a while for me at regionals, maybe on of these young guys has a better and more current slant on that.

Sorry. I did not make my question clear. If wrestler A is a state champ and he wrestles first round in a tournament and wins, but cannot continue due to say an injury. Then can his next opponent count that as a win, head to head (against the state champ) in regard to seeding. Stating we beat the state champ, therefore we should have the higher seed?

We never counted matches that were not physically wrestled. That does not mean that coaches did not count that and it just got by people but it certainly did not, at least at that time, count as a head to head victory if they did not actually physically wrestle. I think that is where common sense must take over in the seeding meeting and people need to remember what they are doing it for. No, I can say that as a coach I would have not let that "we beat a state champ" deal fly in that seeding meeting. I know, if I was running that meeting it wouldn't happen either. Hey not saying it hasn't though.

That will never fly as a head to head win.

With the popularity of dual tournaments, it has increased dramatically the number of matches wrestled. By the book, a forfeit in a dual is counted as a win, whereas a bye in an individually bracketed tournament is not. Also, if an individual defaults out of a tournament, his injury match would count as a loss as well as the next, if the first loss does not eliminate him from a consolation bracket. Both wrestlers against him would have wins recorded, but a head to head win would not fly in a seeding meeting with the no contest. The injury loss would. A wrestler receiving a win by injury default, etc would pick up two points advancement and two points bonus on the championship side, and one point advancement and two points bonus on the consolation side. I hope that helps. It can get confusing. Also, according to the "book" after all wrestlers are seeded, byes should be drawn. Byes should NOT automatically go to the one and two wrestlers, for example. It deprives them of wrestling and picking up bonus for pin, tech fall, etc.

Rick Cue
Ulysses

So if you receive a bye in the first round, and win your second round match, you only get advancement points for the bye, no bonus points? That sucks

True! That's why the top seeds should not get a bye. That punishes the best wrestlers.

I agree, they should be rewarded by having the opportunity to score extra points for their team, and also having a tuneup match for the later rounds..........

That is exactly why I posted this below.



We want matches, we want the "tune up", we want more opportunities to wrestle and earn wins and team points.

I am tired of my son getting byes in tournaments.
Many tournaments that we have been to they just assigned the byes to the seeded wrestlers.

That's what nice about Oklahoma tourneys, you get a first round match if you are seeded........

I agree. It punishes any wrestler that doesn't get to wrestle whether he is the best or not! I would prefer to go all scrambles so we can get 4 or 5 matches no matter what. Byes should always be manually drawn in and not randomized because tournament programs automatically place byes with seeds. This also punishes the young kids wrestling a tough schedule as if they get a bye, then feed right into a top seed every week, it is next to impossible to become seedable as they don't get any first round matches that are more competitive either. We have had at least two tournaments where our best wrestlers had consecutive byes and didn't wrestle until the semifinal round.

Anyway, manually drawing and placing byes on the bracket is the best practice for every wrestler involved in any tournament.

That's probably typical when a basketball guy is running a meeting or a tournament director just wants to get done with the meeting quickly. I don't remember the exacting wording in the rule book, but I think it's recommended and not mandated.

Actually most of the computer programs assign the byes randomly. The problem that you get into is that, like we did at Basehor, it is too easy to seed all .500 or better wrestlers. When you get a quality tourney like that one, there might be fifteen or eighteen wrestlers over .500. We seeded them all because it is fast and we just did. When you do that you limit the possibilities of the byes to about the same lines every time simply because there are no other lines for them to go on.

What we are going to do next year is seed only eight wrestlers per weight. That way, when you draw the byes, it gives you twelve lines per half bracket available for the byes. You will see a much more random appearance of byes when we do that or when anyone does that.

It used to be mandated that all seeded wrestlers must have the opportunity to draw for the bye. I think it still is. I know we do that. That way, conversely they also have the opportunity to draw a match by the same random chance, if that makes sense. Probably if you are going to tourneys and it appears that they always gives the bye's to the seeded guys, it might be, like us, that they are simply seeding too many wrestlers. I say that about us, but you have to understand that in a couple of weights we had wrestlers that were 12-2 and better that were seeded ten and twelve. That is not the way most normal tourney's are though. Don't know if any of that helps you at all but it is what it is.