I like the idea mentioned earlier about matside weigh ins. The only thing I would add is that you don't offer any allowance for clothing. Keep the weights the same and kids have to make the weight with their competition gear on. Why worry about having to give allowances for clothing?
For kids club wrestling I think we should do all remote weigh ins by club. Let the clubs weigh in their kids on Friday evening. Have all of the weights emailed or called in by 8:00 pm on Friday evening. Do not do Sat morning weigh ins at the tournament site. Here are the advantages I see.....
1. As a club you can have the kids come in on Friday evening and weigh in. Play a game and then order in pizza or go out to dinner. This makes it fun and it builds team unity.
2. This gives tournament directors the time to get the brackets done. Coaches show up 1.5 hrs before the start of the tournament for kids that didn't show up and report the scratches to the tournament director. This would allow us to start tournaments on time.
3. This saves the parents money and keeps them from having to get up extremely early to make weigh ins. It cuts out the kids having to sit around for 2-4 hrs before wrestling starts and it makes the experience more enjoyable.
This idea is based on a couple of assumptions.....
1. You don't do this for the qualifying tournaments.
2. We adults can trust each other.
3. The goal of kids wrestling is to get them matches and experience.
The arguments I hear against this are based on adults not trusting each other. I get told that coaches may give their kids extra weight, scales are different, etc.
My response is that every open tournament I have been to in the past 7 years I have witnessed the people monitoring/certifying the weigh ins give at least kid some additional weight (usually no more than .2-.4 lbs). Personally this doesn't bother me. I use this to illustrate that this is already going on. I honestly think if clubs were weighing in their own kids that less of this would occur because they don't want to ruin their reputation.
In the past 7 years I have never seen the weigh in scales be certified. Heck, we have been to a couple of tournaments where they used the old type bathroom scales with the spin dial.....not very accurate. My point to this is that the scales at most open tournaments aren't perfectly accurate....good enough yes!.....perfectly accurate NO! So why do we continue to stress over this for kids wrestling?
I think implementing a system like this would really help the sport. It would also help the clubs that don't promote weight cutting to monitor their kids and parents.
Just my 2 cents.
Shawn Budke
Shawn Budke
