Michael,
I must not have communicated effectively if you interpreted my post saying that remote weigh ins won't work. Personally I think your argument proves the necessity for remote weigh ins....let me give you a couple of examples based on some of the problems that Jeff mentioned....
1. Typo, coaches error, tournament director's error on weight class (the 50 lb example Jeff mentioned). If that was one of my kids and we were do remote weigh ins, as a coach I would have caught that on Fri night when we weighed in. Then I would have called Jeff and informed him of the mistake and given him the kids exact weight. No brackets would have been filled out yet and so (as in your own words) it would have been really easy to fix.
2. Kids weigh in over weight. If we were doing remote weigh ins on Friday night and the kids was over weight, as a coach, we would have 2 options available. The first would be to contact the tournament director and see if we could move him up. Shouldn't be a problem because the brackets aren't done yet (your words). The second option is to tell him he can't wrestle because he didn't make weight. Tournament director's call.
Now let me clarify about Jeff and Mill Valley....If my earlier post insuated in any way that kids didn't get to wrestle because they were over weight.....that is my mistake. This did not happen as far as I know. Jeff and the staff bent over backwards to ensure kids got to wrestle. What I was trying to convey was that is what we tell our parents can happen if kids don't make weight. We do this so kids that are close will hopefully move up to the next weight class. We do not support the kids cutting weight but ultimately that is up to the kids and their parents.
I don't think we want to throw the baby out with the bath water here. I think it is worth a try. I also think a lot of the problems that Jeff talks about would have probably been identified during remote weigh ins (I'm assuming here).
I do agree with Jeff that Split tournaments are the way to go.
Just my thoughts.
Shawn Budke
