Filling Weight Classes-The 2021-22 Data

[drbrad]

In looking at last week's conference tournaments , the Southeast Conference has  8 teams. The smallest 4 teams had 9,9,2, and 0 wrestlers on their rosters. No teams had a full team.There was a weight class that had 3 wrestlers in it. The winner had 2 byes and championship match. Some conferences don't have a conference tournament. Maybe it's time to rethink some of these conference tournaments. Use dual meets to determine a conference champion and open up another date for an individual tournament. At least the kids would get some valuable mat time. Just a thought.

I agree. Loooong ago (early '80's) our Conference Tourney was a BIG deal. However, there were some big differences compared to today. First, back then more of the teams had full rosters (nevermind the discussion of weight classes, there were more wrestlers per team and more evenly divided between biggest and smallest rosters). Also, for most teams, there were fewer and smaller tournaments throughout the season. We had maybe two or three 8 team and one 12-16 team tourneys. After mostly wrestling duals, an individual tournament was exciting. Now, tourneys (especially large ones) are more plentiful. At least in our conference, the energy and excitement just isn't there like it used to be. Plus, brackets are often not filled, some with three or four wrestlers. In our particular case, our regional is almost a repeat of conference tourney (includes all but 2 conference teams, add just 1 team from outside conference). So many if not most matches from last Saturday will be repeated this Saturday. Since wrestlers are focused on State Championship Series, much of the meaning is lost from conference tourney. Maybe others have differing thoughts, but I agree that this past weekend could be utilized in better ways- perhaps out of conference/division quads or tourneys. This could offer more kids more matches (against non-regional opponents if desired) to warm up for regionals.

If conferences would combine to make, say, the Woodland/Southeast tournament, there would at least be 16 teams to pick from. As most conferences are 8ish teams, there could be 16 man scramble brackets that could allow for more wrestling.

That's an interesting option. Wrestlers would all get more than 1 or 2 matches, more competitive brackets. Also, because of more teams/bracket this would reduce likelihood of duplicating upcoming regionals matches.

[knighthead]

I totally agree with the last two posts. The first conference tournament I coached in was 77-78. Yes , those conference tournaments were brutal and then wrestling almost all of the same teams the next two weeks was ridiculous. Look back in the archives to the 1996 Conference tournament , 15 teams , 47 state qualifiers. Fortunately, wrestling had a real advocate in those days , the legendary AD at South Milwaukee HS Jim Teff who lobbied the WIAA to break up the regional and sectional tournaments to not be a repeat of the conference tournament. It wasn't perfect, but it sure helped. Combining the a Woodland and SEC makes total sense. We don't need drastic changes, but as a fan I would like to see a full day of wrestling with complete brackets. Thanks for the great ideas!

[DocWrestling]

I think it would be even more fun to rotate the conferences you combine with.  Maybe the SEC could combine with the FVA so it was completely different matches than regionals or sectionals.  Could even help with seeding for the state tournament.

Host it one year at an FVA school, the next year at and SEC school.  Every other year the team has a longer ride.

Finding new opponents is more fun and would help with new state seeding.  These tournaments then should give announce based on results who was the top conference!  Kids wrestling for themselves, their team, and representing their conference.

[knighthead]

Awesome, love these ideas!  Keep 'em coming , let's improve wrestling as a spectator sport. And then the crazy part is the WIAA takes over the regional and sectional tournaments, raises the admission price to see your kid wrestle one match.

[Handles II]

Let's make a thread about possible changes to Conference tournaments.  I'd like this one to not get too far off track. Most certainly filling an average of 10 out of 14 weight classes is the heart of conference tournament dilemmas. But those other changes (which I'm in favor of discussing) could be done on a different thread in addition to looking at the data of our current weight classes.