Kansas Wrestling Forums General Discussion Kids Folkstyle Douglass Tournament

I was really disappointed in this tournament. They were very disorganized. I know they used the new computer system, but I have to say that the old way works better. They started a little over an hour late. My main concern is that they didn't clean the mats after they cleared them. I saw one kid with ringworm on his face and that concerned me. I would prefer my child not to get that. Getting the medals was tough too. I think you shouldn't wait until ALL the wrestling is done before you start to fill out the brackets. Do them as they come in. I believe alot of people were losing their patience. The only good thing was that the matches were going fast.

I agree that the new computer system did'nt work. Once the tourney got going it was pretty smooth. I hope all the bugs were worked out for future touneys too come if not it could be a HUGE mess. Wrestlers along with parents get up early to be there and have to wait over an hour or more to wrestle is not right. If the computer system does'nt work whats's wrong with the old pencil and paper just to get the matches started on time?

I hope all of our qualifying tourney hosts are paying attention to this. Some of us at the state meeting predicted potential disaster come subs and districts.

We weren't at this tournament, so could you tell me what the issue was with the computer system. We are scheduled to use it for our Novice tournament and I would like to be prepared. Blue Chip used it this summer and it went off without a hitch. I would appreciate any insight you could give us.

I was not at the Douglas tournament, but I will say that the trackwrestling software successfully helps manage tournaments like Liberty, Dixie and BigHorn Nationals, the big Kansas City Airport tournament this past weekend with no issues. There might be a training issue but tournaments much bigger than Douglans use the this software every week with no issues to speak of.

Badbo

I think it took longer because of the weather and the scratches. They had to reprint the brackets whenever there was a scratch, so we had to wait a long time for them to post them again. It just took longer than doing it by hand. I am sure it works nicely when you are prepared.

Thanks for getting back to me. We already have a plan in place if there are scratches. We appreciate both your responses.

I am not for sure what happened, but I believe there is a way to renumber bouts on a changed bracket without renumbering all of the bouts in the entire tournament. This was a headache for the coaches, due largely in part that once the changes were made and posted, all of a sudden a new set of bout numbers for each kid were made again.(I had 51 kids to make changes for the coaches sheets and was three-fourths done with the changes when the brackets were ripped off the wall to make more changes where every kids bout numbers changed once again.) Like I said before, I BELIEVE (I do not know for sure though)there is an option in the program for renumbering a changed bracket itself and not the entire numbering system. Something to watch for in the future that's for sure.

I am planning on NOT using the system for our Tom Faust Memorial tournament due to the bugs that need to be worked out and so forth, however, I am entertaining the idea of using the trackwrestling system for our Novice Championship in February.

Craig Gash
Derby Wrestling Club
Tournament Director

I will email my contact with trackwrestling.com to see if there is a way. Last year we didn't re-bracket and went with what we had (our tournament had only 189 kids show up). Some kids ended up wrestling best 2 out of 3. We held exhibition matches after so the kids could get more mat time in. It save a tremendous amount of time, started just after 9:00am and ended by 12:30pm. The greatest part was that everyone; the kids, the parents, the coaches and the officials went with the flow. Hopefully, we won't have the same issues this year. But you are right, re-bracketing has been the cause of many tournaments starting much later than they should. I'll let you know what information I come up with.

Were the tournaments you mentioned running a "first available mat" format by chance? Or, would the same age and weight groups wrestle on the same mat all day?

A confusing answer Sportsfan02 is both. Many of the youth nationals use s set mat and match number, the KCI airport HS tournament used a bullpen.

Badbo

Hello, I am the owner of Trackwrestling.com, and I wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to explain what happened and offer suggestions to help prevent this in the future. I will start by saying I take responsibility for any of the problems that occured on Saturday. It is my job to understand exactly how tournaments are run, and then offer my suggestions to tournament personel on the best way to utilize Trackwrestling to accomplish what they want to accomplish. I did not do a good enough job communicating with tournament personel on how the event was going to be run, and in retrospect gave them instructions that did not fit with how I think things should have been done.

I was under the impression that this event was a 100% pre-registration event that was pre-bracketed because there would be very few if any changes the morning of the tournament. I thought pre-bracketing and numbering all the matches would be a good idea because it would save time on the morning of the event, and the charts were hung on the wall so people could see them as they came through the doors in the morning. This would be a good plan if there were not many changes, but it is now my understanding that there were lots of changes the morning of the event, and all of the changes caused mat schedules and bout numbers to change dramatically. Whenever there is potential for lots of changes, it is a good idea to just wait to bracket until that morning after the changes are made. In this situation, it was too late, and the choice was then made to just re-number all the charts and start over with a fresh set of bout numbers for every mat (rather than have lots of duplicate bout numbers like 11A, 11B, 12A, 12B, etc.). All these changes were not expected, and that was the cause for the delayed start. If there were only a couple changes, it would have been easy to just make a change, and re-number the mat affected (without changing the bout numbers on that mat by very much at all).

Here is how I think these type of events should be run in the future. If you have 100% pre-registration, that is great, but if you are going to have quite a few changes on the morning of the event, then I would not bracket anything prior to the morning of the event. It sounds like weigh-ins end and there is an hour and a half before wrestling is supposed to start. This gives you plenty of time to bracket out the entire event starting from scratch. Rather than having brackets hanging on the walls when people come through the door, I would have the weigh-in sheets hanging on the walls in place of the brackets. This allows people to double check to make sure they are in the right division and weight class. There are functions that allow you to delete wrestlers that never weigh-ed in, assign the correct bracket type to a weight class based on the # of wrestlers, build the brackets, optimally assign weights to mats based on actual wrestling time, and number the matches assigned to mats all in about 5 minutes. Even if it took and extra 1/2 hour after weigh-ins were done to get all the data entered and double checked in the system, that still means you would have brackets ready shortly there after, and then it is just printer time. With 500 kids averaging 5 kids per weight class, that is 100 charts and a good printer should have them printed in about 5 minutes. Bout sheets to start the event would be about 10 per mat, so if you were running 10 mats that would be another 5 minutes of printer time. The program also has the ability to print a "Team Bout Schedule" which gives a team a list of all kids on their team, who they wrestle, what mat they are on, their bout #, etc. Anyone with a mobile device can get access to this information instantly on trackwrestling.com/mobile

There are surely details I left out about how exactly everything would work, but hopefully that gives people a general idea of what we think would be a good solution for these type of events. If any of my above assumptions are wrong, please let me know. The more information I have regarding these events, and how they are run, the better I will be able to assist anyone who wants to run an event in the future.

We are available for questions, so if anyone wants to contact me directly, you can email justin@trackwrestling.com or you can call 608-554-1501.

Thank you,
Justin

Great explanation Justin, including a solution to correct future problems!

Justin is a great young man and I believe working through him to improve our tournaments will be a good experience!

I was sorry to hear about the problems that occurred at Douglass. Unfortunately, it is not unusual to encounter some glitches when making changes to a well-established system. The question is not whether the old systems worked – they did, and have done so for many years. Rather, it is a matter of whether we can do things better. I give Douglass major kudos for being the first local tournament in Kansas to take this leap into the electronic age of bracketing.

Once I saw the posts regarding problems at Douglass I contacted Justin at TrackWrestling.com to inform him of the concerns raised. To Justin’s credit, I received a prompt response from him, which he followed up on by posting onto this topic. With this kind of response, combined with a proven and tested product, I feel confident that we will work through any future issues quickly and will be able to provide a significant benefit to our wrestlers, parents and fans.

I believe that it was mandated that the state qualifiers use trackwrestling to run their tournaments. One issue I noticed that may need to be or may have already been addressed is the seeding of wrestlers at the sub-district level. then the following week at districts the way the placers are seeded onto the district bracket (1N vs 4S etc.)I believe that with the proper planning and training, the trackwrestling system will work out great.

I especially like the statistical side of the tournament where I can go through each kid's bracket and see how they performed. I also like the feature where I can look up a team's performance and it lists each kid of that team and their progress through the rounds of the tournament.

Craig Gash
Derby Wrestling Club
Tournament Director