As a tournament director myself and a parent of an "A" wrestler I figured I would weigh in on this topic from both sides. (and no I am not riding the fence on the topic)

From a tournament director's point of view, I like to see all kids have some sort of success in order to keep their interest in the sport for years to come. This is why we try to have our Open and Novice tournaments run on the same day. In the Open side, this year we opened up our first 32 man bracket that was chocked full of A wrestlers, luckily I knew several of the kids in the bracket and their abilities and hopefully seeded it properly. We also give away 4" medals for the Open side with 2" medals for the Novice. it is my opinion that in order to earn those larger medals you need to step it up and in a 16 man or 32 man bracket, 3rd or 4th place is still quite an acheivement. In the Novice side my rule of thumb is to stop at an 8 man bracket and look for possibilities of using a 5 man round robin. That's 4 matches for each kid in the bracket in one day no matter win or lose. I have also noticed trackwrestling using 6 man round robin brackets which I am not sold on as of yet, but it could be a good thing for the C-D wrestlers and Novice wrestlers to incorporate 6 man round robins in order to get mat time and experience. Maybe we should start adopting FS/GR bracketing where you have a random draw into 2 round robin pools then 1st and 2nd in each pool draws into the championship bracket. This would eliminate any seeding problems. Just a thought.

As for seeding by other tournaments, I know that it can be difficult when you receive 8 entries at the same weight and they are all ranked "A" wrestlers. My rule of thumb in this situation is to 1. separate teammates 2. separate district clubs. This seems like a fair way to handle that type of situation. As for putting D wrestlers in with A and B wrestlers if it is an Open tournament and there is no Novice available, well, that's life.

As a father of an "A" wrestler I tell my son if he draws a "D" wrestler in a bracket to work moves and work for a Tech Fall instead of getting a quick pin. Quick pinning a D wrestler does nothing for either child, however, working moves teaches the stronger wrestler how to flow from move to move, and hopefully teaches the weaker wrestler some defensive tactics that he can work on in the practice room. Heck, i've seen my son pull a D wrestler off his back and then give him tips after the match on how to defend some of the moves he was working. I also don't like to see seeding on a bracket where it pits the 2 strongest wrestlers in the bracket against each other in the first round. This is somewhat unfair to the other kids in the bracket, since one of the "A"'s has to lose that first match it then puts him on the backside of the bracket to knock out the other kids that may have had a shot at placing 3rd or 4th if the bracket were seeded correctly.

Sorry I am so long-winded but I thought I might as well get my 2 cents in since I haven't posted much on these forums much this year so far.

Craig Gash
Derby Wrestling Club
Tournament Director