MLee

Not sure why you're getting so defensive. I agreed w/ you. I simply would like this topic stay on track and be constructive. For some reason, everyone gets so heated and angry, it becomes counter-productive. I was asked to compare our format to others, so I did. I started w/ Ohio's TOC and USA Wrestling. Now, regarding the rest of your comment. Not sure where to begin? First, I don't believe it is the association's job to "get them in line." The fact is: WKY has gone rogue and decided to do their own thing. They have their reasons. I might not agree with it, but at least they're wrestling. And if you've followed the bouncing ball, you should have seen the MAJOR problems w/ set weight classes in our youth state. The evidence is there. You can choose to ignore if you'd like, but until someone SHOWS the association a format that is better (not just "lace them up" attitude), the 10% rule shouldn't go anywhere. As far as the "don't make weight and go home" comment. I'm at a complete loss for words. You do realize we have 6 year olds attending our tournament? What a great way to promote our sport..."Sorry Mr. Johnson, your 6 year old was overweight. He can either put these plastics on and cut that half a pound or go home." We might as well be handing out basketball sign ups while we're at it!

I couldn't agree more. KY Youth Wrestling is experiencing many "growing pains" we're dealing with. Getting more organized and improving our communication in particular. I suggest creating a thread w/ more suggestions and comments regarding this important topic. This topic is in reference to set weight classes vs 10% rule differences.

Makes sense to me. I was told cost was one of the reasons coaches voted against team scores (trophies), so I just wanted to throw that out there. I'm all for more medals for kids vs less, regardless of cost.

Stalling, I am ok w/ the current format, but am open to making changes/improvements. I was asked to look at other formats (TOC, USA Wrestling) weight classes to compare the differences. I'll take a look at OAC, but I believe they use USA weight classes if I'm not mistaken. This has been discussed before, but we cannot compare ourselves to OH. It's like comparing apples and soccer balls in my opinion. They have more kids in Cincinnati than we do in our whole state; hence, their need for quailifiers. We're on track to need qualifying tournaments in the future, but I don't believe we're there yet. This is something the association should discuss at the next meeting: how many kids before we have qualifiers? I don't mind having multiple kids from one club in the same bracket. However, who wants to see a bracket of 8 kids from the same club? Unlike OH, we have a handful of large clubs and the rest are much smaller in comparison. An effort has been made to separate the kids a bit for everyone (kids, coaches, parents). I don't have any answers regarding WKY. It would be great to get more WKY kids to our state tournament. I was told they started their season after ours, but not sure.

I've tried attaching the spreadsheet 3 times and it doesn't seem to work. PM me your email and I'll send it that way.

Not sure how creative it was, but I ran the tournament using 16 man brackets w/ the 10% rule. Here are the results: 65 total brackets (exact same as TOC, which I found odd). 48 full 16 man brackets (one 17 man) 17 less than 16 Major problem bracket sizes (6,4,5,5,5,3,2,3) At first glance, some of the positives: More competitive. I don't know a lot of the top youth kids outside on NKY, but I saw some really tough brackets. Would be fun to watch. Less brackets, less cost. We spend quite a bit on the medals, this would naturally save $$. Evenly distributed size weight classes. Other than the 8 oddball fringe classes, 48 out of 65 is pretty good. Having the same size classes helps the tournament run smoother. Less concern w/ moving kids out of bracket. If we agreed on only 2 kids from same club per 8 man, is it save to assume 4 per 16? If so, this somehow worked out better. I didn't look at every team, but I did look at our club. We didn't have one bracket where we had more than 4. Negatives: With larger brackets comes larger spread rate. With 8 man, it is pretty easy to keep the majority of the weight classes under 5% spread. 16 man opens the door to more 8-9% brackets. Most looked good, but there were some close. Less brackets, less medals for kids. I think it is a good thing to have more kids leaving w/ medals. (I realize I have this as both a positive and negative for all you wise guys out there!)

Yes they do. I'm about to grab a Cinnabon and get the heck out of here.

I concur, Ranger is the man! I don't and never will deny how valuable he is to Kentucky Wrestling. I respect him, his opinions and ideas. I am working on a 16 man bracket version of the 10% rule. I'll post it as soon as I get it done. Right now I'm too busy shopping at Mall Lee.

I'd like to see this issue resolved, too. I got an anonymous call last year that a Region submitted weights w/out a weigh in. Major problem.

Ha, picking up on your sarcasm.

Well, obviously there is no perfect solution/format. We seem to dance back and forth between weight cutting and bracket issues w/ this topic. I concede (you win), 10% rule will not ELIMINATE all weight cutting. In addition to consulting w/ CYW officials and having over 20 years involvement in the sport, I have 2 years of State weigh ins, Raider Rumble weights (10%) vs MS Tournaments, IN State Tournament, TOC Tournament, Border Wars weights (set weights classes). One thing cannot be disputed: the kids that wrestle in both, tend to weigh more at 10% rule tournaments! Draw whatever conclusion you'd like, I'm done trying to convince everyone. Back to the bracket issues. What is everyone's take on that? Is there a 4th format out there we can look at to compare?

I was asked by Plantman to do the brackets using Indiana's format (they use USA's classes). I found myself glancing over their state brackets and recognized a few kids that attended our Raider Rumber tournament, which I have saved. I noticed 3 kids that had dropped over 4 lbs for their Youth State Tournament vs our 10% rule Raider Rumble. Weight cutting possibly?

Mike, w/ all due respect, can we really trust ALL parents and ALL coaches? If we cannot, we should implement rules to regulate and protect the kids. Isn't this precisely why it's now being done at the HS and College levels? We tried letting parents and coaches regulate, and they failed miserably.

OK, so you're conceding kids cut weight at MS (w/ set weight classes) because of competition, am I following you? If so, then by the same logic, wouldn't youth kids (who aren't super stud MS kids) have the same urge to drop w/ set weight classes because of competition?

USA Wrestling classes would give us some troubles. First, their birth years aren't in sync with ours. USA ages 05-98, KY 06-99. I ran the brackets excluding our 04/05 and 00/99 groups and used everyone else (02-03, 00-01) 28 brackets. 28 total weight classes 16 brackets would have 16+ kids 6 brackets would have less than 8 kids Major problem bracket sizes (41, 38, 31, 37, 31, 35, 35, 3, 6, 6, 6, 4, 5) Of the 28 brackets, 13 would give us problems Also, USA has a weight limit, which we don't. I added two additional HWT classes to both age groups; otherwise, 9 kids would have been excluded from the tournament. As one could see, USA Wrestling classes would give us some troubles too. This sample was only 2 of the 4 age groups and I made a modification. One other point. I'm not trying to beat a dead horse, but obviously I feel this is an important issue. I looked at the weights of some kids that wrestled both MS and youth. I noticed, in almost every situation, the youth weights are considerably higher than their MS weight class. Now that either means the scales were wrong (doubtful), all the MS kids naturally gained significant weight in just a couple weeks (not a chance), or they were cutting weight (bingo). More importantly, there is something about the Youth State Tournament that deterred them from cutting again. Anyone have an idea what that could be? That's right, the new President of the United States....Mr. 10% rule!

I was shocked to hear coaches actually voted against having team scores at our Youth State Tournament. I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks about this decision.

I have to admit, that is a great point! We can press the reset button and/or mimic other formats, but in the end I believe we'll be right back where we currently are. There is no way to divide the weight classes using set weights to evenly distribute the classes, if that is a goal. I don't care if we use 1 lb increments. We'll still have many classes much larger than others because of more common weights. The 10% format is the best to do this because we're not boxed in by rigid barriers. I'd like to see 10%, using 16 man brackets, with a clear, defined protocol for how the brackets get "tweaked". We need to agree on the # of kids from one team per bracket (currently 2) and whether or not to separate Regions (which I like).

They do for Ohio's Tournament of Champions and that seems to work out fine.

I did sort by age grouping, just like in TOC. Not too difficult to do. I'll be sure to look at other state's (IN) and USA when I get some time. JW, there are as many "less than 8 brackets" but not as many 2,3,and 4 man. The 10% format allows to consolidate; therefore, we have more 5,6, and 7 man brackets vs 2,3,and 4. Inevitably, there will be fringe weights where there's really nothing you can do. The bigger issue for me is running a tournament w/ such a variance in bracket size. Also, did we solve the issue of making it more competitive? Certainly for some, but not so much for others. One option is to use the 10% rule w/ 16 man brackets. I'll play around with that as well to see how it looks. Some type of qualifying tournament is inevitable. I don't believe we are there yet. The Association needs to discuss this at the next meeting. "Regionals" doesn't seem logical considering some clubs are larger than the smaller Regions. I like the idea of designating 4 "quailifying tournaments" where kids need to place in the top 3 or 4 in order to be eligible to compete at state. TOC's uses this format. I'll gladly send out the master spreadsheet when I get back into my office.

Ranger, the TOC uses more weight classes than most state tournaments; therefore, if we use other formats that have been suggested, we're going to run into the same problem if not worse. If we did use this format, we'd almost certainly have to find a way to split the larger brackets into half. Not sure what to do with all those small brackets. No matter what format we'd use, some type of "tweeking" would have to be done every year to adjust.

We had 14 brackets that had 6 or less, but only one 2 man. Mostly 5 man brackets. The bigger concern to me is the larger classes. How do we deal with those?

JW, I am not the spokesperson for the 10% rule, but I am in favor of anything that helps our state. Our current bylaws have helped our youth wrestling grow every year. Why change them? What does a youth state championship mean to the resume of a wrestler? Absolutely nothing, especially in KY. I don't care if we made 100 man brackets. Do you think any college recruiter looks at that? Not a chance. As it pertains to cutting weight. You claim weight cutting is occuring at our youth level. What evidence do you have? I coach a program with over 100 kids, none of them lose weight..not a single one. If you need proof, I can provide weigh in sheets from our first tournament to our last. We had less than 1000 participants in our state tournament, so I have a sample size of 10% to support my case. Is there an isolated case of some crazy dad/coach encouraging it? I'm sure. But that is the exception, not the norm.

Deadlift, I appreciate your comments and understand how some don't understand the benefits of the 10% rule. Not sure how I became the spokesperson for it, but all I can tell you is it works and youth wrestling has flourished in KY (and Cincy, OH) using it. I believe the hypothetical situations you and others have mentioned simply are not happening. I suppose it COULD happen, but it's not. The results and evidence is there to support the benefits, people can choose to either believe it or not. I'm well aware of how everyone else does it (OH, PA, NY, etc.) but that doesn't necessarily make it better. These states have had youth organizations for a lot longer than us and are much more established. One quote from a youth coach from a very large program in Cincinnati, OH, "Cleveland is stuck in their ways." I'm also aware of areas in our state that do not weigh in for Regionals. I can assure you most of our state does. It is a major problem that needs to be fixed, I agree.

Not quite sure when I did that, but very well. Let's move on.