You won't know until you put your wrestler in a small open tourney. If he handles it, go bigger. As far as Novice wrestlers being better and let in novice tourneys, I am against it. I am lucky that both my boys took the sport easily. Once they won their first open tourney a few weeks into their first season, we didn't enter any novice. I feel if they can place in an open, they are no longer novice.