Participation numbers

[DocWrestling]

I think we could easily go to 2 divisions here in WI but going to 1 could really kill small town rural wrestling and even some D1 urban programs.

The publicity and notoriety comes from the state tournament.  With one division you could see many schools go decades without a state qualifier and that is not going to help save programs.

The best wrestlers need a program to wrestle at and they need people to wrestle so saving teams has to be the priority.  I believe reducing the number of weight classes will save teams and programs much like it is doing in football now

[Barou]

Eliminate Regionals and have a 2 day sectional tournament.  Works well in Minnesota and it will work well in WI.

[GradeTough]

Eliminate Regionals and have a 2 day sectional tournament.  Works well in Minnesota and it will work well in WI.

+100

[dforsythe]

Don't let the WIAA fool you that they care about geography and let them use it as an excuse.  That box has been opened.
I think the wrestlers and such would love a mix-up in geography for a chance to wrestle new opponents in new places.  I would love it if the WIAA really mixed up the geography across regions.  Other sports do it.

Here are the girls playoff brackets.
http://halftime.wiaawi.org/CustomApps/Tournaments/Brackets/HTML/2019_Basketball_Girls_Div1_Sec1_2.html

These teams are traveling for one game in one round of tournament
D1 Sectional 1-
Has teams from Superior to Oshkosh in one sectional- Thus first round games like Hudson @ Appleton West, Oshkosh West @ Chippewa Falls, and Eau Claire Memorial @ Oshkosh North
D1 Sectional 2-
Covers from Green Bay to Oconomowoc- Green Bay East has to travel to Menomonee Falls on a school night- 122 miles-  I bet the kids will think this is fun.  At least until Wednesday morning.    If Green Bay East wins they get to go to Arrowhead for 2nd round

The difference here is that they are seeding the whole sectional. The teams are in their geographical, but they are seeded. They also don't have a tournament site where all the teams gather in one place. They are playing one game at a time. We do not seed the teams in the sectional. The same thing happens in sports like cross country and track. There is no seeding, so you are stuck with the teams that make geographic sense.

[whatever]

To me, the best way to fix a lot of this is go the way of California: 1 Division.

In an individual sport, school size is irrelevant anyway.

Not true - having a larger pool of participants to draw from does make a difference.
 

The whole reason they went to 3 classes was because the D1 schools had 2/3 of the state placewinners before the class system.

[GradeTough]

Eliminate Regionals and have a 2 day sectional tournament.  Works well in Minnesota and it will work well in WI.

+100

Ghetto gave me +1 in a Badger thread yesterday, and I felt like the kid whose parents haven't adjusted to Tooth Fairy inflation!

-10
Yeah, I agree so I'm gonna doc you ten just because...lol

[GradeTough]

So if there is a Super Regional, how does Team State participates get sorted out? Not a fan of using an individual tournament to decide a team bracket but not sure there is another way that makes sense with time frames.

Some teams are really great as tournament teams but not so as dual teams because different strategies and juggling is done during dual meets for match-up purposes you can't do in an individual tournament.

Does a Super Regional format cause another issue?

[nutman]

Here is another consideration...probably missing something here, but just a thought for d2 and d3.   In many of the other sports the sectionals are assigned and seeded.  If this same principle was considered, we might use team size as one of the criteria.  For nay-sayers talking about traveling...well when you see the basketball and football brackets it shouldn't even be an argument.  This solution would have two goals- 1) Split up strong teams in a geographic area so quality 3rd place finishers not moving on would be minimized, and 2) Fill up the bracket.

All of the sectional teams would be assigned as they are now.  However, geography would not be used to divide the regional.     There would be a seeding meeting for all the teams in the sectional to decide, which of the 4 sites they would go.   The top 8 seeds would be seeded.   #1, 2, 3, and 4 teams would be separated to the four different regional sites.  8 would be paired with 1, 7 with 2, 3 with 6, and 4 with 5.    The next criteria for non-seeded teams would be team size.  This would ensure that a regional with several teams with low numbers would be separated and smooth numbers more evenly.  This would limit the amount of weight classes where there are 1 or 2 participants in a weight class.  The logic  for the top 8 teams is that they probably have higher numbers based on being considered for a seed as their is a correlation with having fewer forfeits to winning matches.  

The super regional is a great idea, but it would require a second day for full brackets with true wrestle backs.  This would put wrestling more in line with other sports with seeding.  I'm sure there would be implications at some weights, but it is just a brainstorm for the number problem without taking opportunities away by reducing the weight classes.

[DocWrestling]

Don't let the WIAA fool you that they care about geography and let them use it as an excuse.  That box has been opened.
I think the wrestlers and such would love a mix-up in geography for a chance to wrestle new opponents in new places.  I would love it if the WIAA really mixed up the geography across regions.  Other sports do it.

Here are the girls playoff brackets.
http://halftime.wiaawi.org/CustomApps/Tournaments/Brackets/HTML/2019_Basketball_Girls_Div1_Sec1_2.html

These teams are traveling for one game in one round of tournament
D1 Sectional 1-
Has teams from Superior to Oshkosh in one sectional- Thus first round games like Hudson @ Appleton West, Oshkosh West @ Chippewa Falls, and Eau Claire Memorial @ Oshkosh North
D1 Sectional 2-
Covers from Green Bay to Oconomowoc- Green Bay East has to travel to Menomonee Falls on a school night- 122 miles-  I bet the kids will think this is fun.  At least until Wednesday morning.    If Green Bay East wins they get to go to Arrowhead for 2nd round

The difference here is that they are seeding the whole sectional. The teams are in their geographical, but they are seeded. They also don't have a tournament site where all the teams gather in one place. They are playing one game at a time. We do not seed the teams in the sectional. The same thing happens in sports like cross country and track. There is no seeding, so you are stuck with the teams that make geographic sense.

Yep, and why can't we seed all the teams in a sectional and then spread them out amongst regionals?  Better yet  D1 should go to four sectionals for wrestling.  Seed the teams.  Top 4 from each sectional qualify for state.  Wrestle different people and increase chances of getting the best to state

[DocWrestling]

It takes two days to whittle down the wrestlers into state qualifiers.

That can be done on two separate Saturdays or it can be done in one weekend on a Friday/Saturday.  One weekend makes more sense for everyone.

Right now every wrestler can enter the regional.  I also think you can make this much more manageable if you simply eliminate a lot of wrestlers from the bracket.  Set a winning percentage to qualify, etc but have wild card entries based on past if a kid is injured or something.

Don't just eliminate the sub .500 guys from wrestling though.  Let them wrestle at same event but in a "silver" division to end their season.  We are just wasting everyone's time and energy and run into match limitation issues by having state qualifiers wrestle kids that are just filling a weight class or are 5-20 on the season.  Let them wrestle in an end of season "silver" bracket that has nobody with a winning record.  I bet they would be excited for it.  Or maybe they just want to go out and get pounded at regionals or barely make sectionals and get pounded on then.

If everyone does not have to wrestle in the "gold" bracket to go to state everything becomes more manageable.  Same thing with team state.  Get rid of individual component.  Easy to manage when you get rid of idea that every team has to qualify for it.  Maybe you have to finish top 3 in your conference to qualify for team state competition. 

[thequad]

If you combined the Valders and Little Cute regionals, here is the number of wrestlers you would of had at each weight;

106-10
113-10
120-8
126-11
132-11
138-12
145-12
152-12
160-12
170-10
182-12
195-10
220-11
285-11
I was surprised there were this many!
The number of first round matches was 39.
The number of first round matches in a super regional would be 33.
This means fewer wrestlers would be out of chance to advance after the first round, at a super regional if you kept the same procedure as you have now. Also the best four wrestlers at each weight would advance to the sectional.
This is why I think a super regional would be much better! I hope all my numbers are right.
Again I was surprised their were that many wrestlers. I think in other areas it would make a bigger difference, especially in D3.
I think that this would also be better for getting the top teams to team sectional.

[ramjet]

I believe I crunched the numbers Saturday and Crandon Regional had only 39 participants.   That's out of a total possible of 112. 

That is terrible and actually not worth going to see. I like the idea of Super Regionals.

It is terrible however there are many wrestlers who are working there butts off up there. So to say it's not worth in the context of combining Regionals that is correct. I am guessing that's how you meant it....Numbers are low right now but we need people to bring the significance of wrestling back to the Northwoods. One kid at a time. But combining Regionals is great idea take the top 4. So if you combined the Coleman and Crandon you would have a much better Regional and the best 4 wrestlers go to the Sectional.

[wrestlemania]

"I really think that the coaches and the schools need to push the WIAA to consider a SUPER-REGIONAL."

If they did, then the Super Regionals would have happened already. The only thing the WIAA handles exclusively is the geography. Whether there are super regionals or not is up to the coaches to push for, as you say and get from the WIAA if they really wanted them.

But since it hasn't happened, then you can only surmise the coaches like the set-up exactly the way it is regardless if it leaves the regionals in the sparsely populated areas exactly that - sparse.

I agree with the sentiment that you have to have multi-classes to benefit small-town wrestling or it will go the way of the dodo. But also I agree that six teams are not enough for a regional and you need to combine regionals because of the disparities involved. Hopefully the coaches whose kids were left out because some regionals were a little more stacked than others (particularly in the eastern part of the state) are the ones who push for the change otherwise good wrestlers are going to continue to be screwed over because of accidents of geography and the WIAA can only do so much to balance things out.

The big difference between Minnesota and Wisconsin wrestling is that JHP and consolidation allow for more dual-meet orientated focus in Minnesota while in Wisconsin, it's nothing for a small high school to have a team of 5-7 kids because so long as the individual tournament exists they can find their glory with a handful of individual wrestlers competing for titles in Division 3. Combining divisions would put a stop to this but at what cost? The population numbers aren't going to be much different in the future. Are we going to penalize people who want to wrestle but have the misfortune, again by geography, of being located in a part of the state with more cows or bears than people?

Keep the divisions but go to the super regionals (or just two regionals per sectional, don't really need to call them super) and seed them. That's the way to go.  

To me, I would hand out state title for team and individual wrestling, because it's two different sports.

[NoFooForU]

D1 doesnt seem to have this problem............ maybe all those cheerleaders for D2 and D3 should take notice.

[switch_it]

I believe I crunched the numbers Saturday and Crandon Regional had only 39 participants.   That's out of a total possible of 112. 

That is terrible and actually not worth going to see. I like the idea of Super Regionals.

It is terrible however there are many wrestlers who are working there butts off up there. So to say it's not worth in the context of combining Regionals that is correct. I am guessing that's how you meant it....Numbers are low right now but we need people to bring the significance of wrestling back to the Northwoods. One kid at a time. But combining Regionals is great idea take the top 4. So if you combined the Coleman and Crandon you would have a much better Regional and the best 4 wrestlers go to the Sectional.

If you combined the Coleman and Crandon Regionals you would have a good Regional.  Relatively speaking, this would be a very weak Super Regional.  At the Coleman regional, two teams accounted for 27 of the 47 entries (Coleman and Bonduel).  The rest of that regional was 20 combined wrestlers...  It would be crazy to see Super Regionals have only 3 or 4 wrestlers in a bracket and that theoretically could have happened this year if combining those two regionals.

This is a good example of why Super Regionals should then be seeded as mentioned by others in this thread.