Agree, 100%, with Mr. Church. A bye shouldn't count. But, an open at any dual should. The wrestler made the weight to compete, not his fault there was nobody to wrestle. Or even worse, they sat varsity wrestlers, to keep there stats up, avoiding a loss.
And it happens!

An open in a dual is labelled a forfeit. Kid still has to appear and get his hand raised to get the team points. Therefore, I believe that can count on his record. There is a difference between 1st round Bye and Forfeit in a Dual.

I think we are making this way too hard. Let's simplify, TWO things have to happen for a match to count towards or against a record. There has to be a winner and there has to be a loser. If there is no one to put a tally mark down for on the losers side there can be no tally on the winners side. Byes and Opens are ways of inflating records plain and simple. I don't care if you had to make weight or not. I don't care if someone was dodging you and didn't go out on the mat or not. There has to be two tally marks. 1 winner/1 loser, simple math.

SJA left guys at home that would have been on top of the podium. We over schedule to provide an option to take the ACT in February, be sick or injured, skip a weekend for academics or whatever the case may be. I think the Thunder still finished in the top half.

I don't agree. I am not complaining about open weights. The Thunder would not care if their opens resulted in giving up 2 advancement and 2 bonus for their opens on the front and 1 plus 2 on the back. We have a reason that we CANNOT bring guys. We aren't leaving guys home bc they would get pinned and we are worried about team points or regional seeding records.

This year at the JoCo Classic there were seven teams with 8 or fewer wrestlers. These are 6a schools with over 1,000 and sometimes more than 1,500 students. There is no excuse to not find 14 competitors.

Will some of those teams may be young and it would be not very wise to send them to the wolves at that point in their wrestling career. I am not talking about dodging but fresh/soph with little to no experience.

What would a Bobcat, Newton, Derby tournament do to benefit that type of kid. Probably remind him that he started way to late.

On the other hand the same kid can go wrestle 3/4 matched at a JV tournament with kids close to his same experience and skill level.

It is called development, some schools and kids need it. Again this isn't dodging, this is being outclassed and out gunned.

Does everyone fit into that category I bet not, but I have seen the success of a few of these type of kids already this year.

Will you have to remember that SJA is a exception to most rules, there aren't many school with 2 to 3 deep quality kids that can go win varsity matches. Most are lucky to even feel the entire roster with "experienced" kids.