I have helped with two tournaments this year and both of them had some of the same problems. The biggest was how much time you have when you close weigh ins to when you start printing wall brackets and bout sheets.

I would like some input to help with this and any other problems to run a more efficent tournament. Here are a few options that I see could help.

(1 )Sattelite weigh ins by doing this you would have the night before and the mourning of to have all the bracketing done and printed and ready for coaches in plenty of time before the tournament ever starts.

(2) Close the weigh ins the mourning of the tournament earlier to allow more time for bracketing. If this option is used it must be mandatory or you will not have acomplished anything.

(3) Instead of starting the tournament at 9 you could set the time for 10 to help give time to do the brackets.

These are just some options that I have heard and I am sure there are plenty more. But I think that with input from all those that go to tournaments rather it be from coaches, wrestlers, or spectators we can come up with something that we all can live with.

I know that there are some critics out there that only will see the negatives but for those of you that have helped hosting a tournament you all know haow much time is involved. This the biggest selling point for me is all of the small things that is so easy to acomplish using trackwrestling that would be a night mare if you were to have done it the old way.

When we had the Paola Tournamnet this year we were able to allow several kids that had entered into the tournament either in the wrong weight class or just plain and simple over weight the option of moving to a differant weight class so they could wrestle. Then when weigh ins were closed we had 38 scratches that we had to deal with. This was done with ease but because of the changes that we did we were hurried to get started at 9 (which I am very commited in doing) we made a few mistakes and did not meet our goals.

If we could keep this topic going I think it will help every tournament Director host a much better tournament.

Thanks

Tuff Hermreck
Paola Wrestling Club