To Wrestling Tournament Managers, Coaches, Fans, and anyone involved with wrestling tournaments.
Just a few comments before we get into the OHSAA post season wrestling tournaments. Most Sectional tournaments are going to be a one-day tournament using a 16-team bracket. Most tournaments will be using a computer to set up the tournament -- entries, seeding, brackets, scoring, results, etc. For obvious reasons, before the 1980’s, most wrestling tournaments were run and scored by paper and pencil. Fortunately, that all changed with the advent of the personal computer. The more common computer programs are The Wrestling Tourney, Track Wrestling, Sikora Soft System, and Baumspage Mobile Wrestling Manager.
A word of caution here. Scoring a tournament is highly important, not only to the wrestlers involved, but also the teams they represent. I have used The Wrestling Tourney, Baumspage Mobile Wrestling Manager, and its predecessor when it was written in BASIC programming. Those programs were absolutely accurate in scoring our tournaments. I have no experience with Track Wrestling or Sikora Soft programs. I checked (on the Internet) a Sikora Soft run tournament and it appeared to score the tournament accurately. Using a 16-team bracket for that tournament, when there were 8 or less wrestlers in a weight class, the bracket was set up as an 8-team bracket and scored as such. That’s as it should be.
Now comes the Track Wrestling computer program. I have seen a tournament (again, on the Internet) that used a 16-team bracket and had only two wrestlers in a particular weight class. It was scored as if the winner had 3 Byes (6 points) and also received 1st place points (the regular 16 points). By NFHS rules adopted by the OHSAA, that should have been only a 2-team bracket with no Bye points. There were other scoring errors when there were 8 or fewer wrestlers in a weight class on a 16-team bracket. Those should have been scored as an 8 (or even a 4-team bracket if appropriate). Fewer Byes and fewer Bye points.
My suggestion is, to those tournaments that insist on using the Track Wrestling program, please also score your tournament “by hand” using the NFHS and OHSAA regulations for number of Byes in a bracket. Make it right for the wrestlers and teams involved.
A little of my background: I have been managing and scoring Junior High and High School Individual wrestling tournaments since 1969. I have managed and scored Sectional tournaments, and scored District and State tournaments, and I am still scoring a Sectional tournament. In all of these years, I have made mistakes in scoring (not many, but one mistake is too many), but have also gone back and corrected them.
Just a few comments before we get into the OHSAA post season wrestling tournaments. Most Sectional tournaments are going to be a one-day tournament using a 16-team bracket. Most tournaments will be using a computer to set up the tournament -- entries, seeding, brackets, scoring, results, etc. For obvious reasons, before the 1980’s, most wrestling tournaments were run and scored by paper and pencil. Fortunately, that all changed with the advent of the personal computer. The more common computer programs are The Wrestling Tourney, Track Wrestling, Sikora Soft System, and Baumspage Mobile Wrestling Manager.
A word of caution here. Scoring a tournament is highly important, not only to the wrestlers involved, but also the teams they represent. I have used The Wrestling Tourney, Baumspage Mobile Wrestling Manager, and its predecessor when it was written in BASIC programming. Those programs were absolutely accurate in scoring our tournaments. I have no experience with Track Wrestling or Sikora Soft programs. I checked (on the Internet) a Sikora Soft run tournament and it appeared to score the tournament accurately. Using a 16-team bracket for that tournament, when there were 8 or less wrestlers in a weight class, the bracket was set up as an 8-team bracket and scored as such. That’s as it should be.
Now comes the Track Wrestling computer program. I have seen a tournament (again, on the Internet) that used a 16-team bracket and had only two wrestlers in a particular weight class. It was scored as if the winner had 3 Byes (6 points) and also received 1st place points (the regular 16 points). By NFHS rules adopted by the OHSAA, that should have been only a 2-team bracket with no Bye points. There were other scoring errors when there were 8 or fewer wrestlers in a weight class on a 16-team bracket. Those should have been scored as an 8 (or even a 4-team bracket if appropriate). Fewer Byes and fewer Bye points.
My suggestion is, to those tournaments that insist on using the Track Wrestling program, please also score your tournament “by hand” using the NFHS and OHSAA regulations for number of Byes in a bracket. Make it right for the wrestlers and teams involved.
A little of my background: I have been managing and scoring Junior High and High School Individual wrestling tournaments since 1969. I have managed and scored Sectional tournaments, and scored District and State tournaments, and I am still scoring a Sectional tournament. In all of these years, I have made mistakes in scoring (not many, but one mistake is too many), but have also gone back and corrected them.