I posed the same question last year. Unless something has changed, the answer I was given was that each District was only allowed four spots in the bracket at State. If you did not qualify in the top four in your District, you were not allowed to take up an open spot from another District. I believe that there ended up being only 12 or 13 wrestlers in the U12 68 pound bracket last year at State, the remaining positions were byes.

I don't know if this has changed or will ever change. It seems to me that Districts that have more wrestlers in them could be allotted openings from other Districts that don't field as many kids at each age/weight class. I know for a fact that one wrestler from our District that did not qualify for State was good enough to beat at least one, and possibly as many as three or four of the kids that were in the bracket at State. One more example, I also know of a wrestler that qualified for State last year without winning one match at either Subs or Districts (he went 0-4 and wrestled the same kid all four times because they were the only two kids in that age/weight group in their entire district. Our District had around 10 kids in the same age/weight group trying to fill the four spots for State. I hate to see byes in a State bracket when there are kids that deserve to be there but are being penalized (possibly) because they have a lot more wrestlers in their District. Just my thoughts.