Sitting out now or not being there for the regionals. Don't think the participation number will be much higher at regionals than I stated in the opening post--maybe 5%. History repeats.
Here is a paragraph I cut from a March 2013 post I made reference the same issue---first round openings/bye at 654A 2013 regionals: These number were lifted from the Trackwrestling and/other online reports after the 2013 State Tournament.:
"OPENs all over in every 2013 regional in every class. Just did a numbers finger drill. Of 1792 possible opening slots in all brackets in all 654A regionals, there were 385 first round "OPENS"----or in other words 1351 filled opening round slots. That's a 75% fill (1351 divided by 1792==75%). Opening round filled slots by class was 89% fill (99 wrestlers) in 6A , 84% fill (94 wrestlers) in 5A, 68% fill (152 wrestlers) in 4A. The 321A regionals show more filled slots in 16 bracket tournaments--not many, a few--but they have 22-23 schools per regional tournament"(end of 2013 post).
Just went back to my first post and agree my original number projection may be a little low--maybe 10% low. Will still be a problem what ever the numbers. The only long term solution is to reduce the number of first round slots. That will require something like a 654A restructure to 40 school classes for 6A, 5A and 4A (4 x 10 school one day regionals in each class, with 8 bracket tournaments. If, and there will be a few weight classes with 9 or 10 team, no problem, pigtail the #9 and #10 teams (8 vs 9 and 9 vs 10)(to keep the bracket square, divisible by 2, pigtail loser will have to be one match eliminations).
Another option to fill a regional tournament; if there is no 3 X 40 class restructure, is to allow a school to enter more than one wrestler in a weight class. Someone mentioned last year that this is done in Montana--a low density population state. Have to be allowed under very restricted conditions. How? Suppose a team has very, very good wrestler in the varsity slot, plus a very good wrestler in the same weight class who is locked out by the varsity wrestler. If the tournament weight bracket is not full, plus the next higher weight class is full thus locking out the #2 wrestler from moving up a weight, why not let the team enter his #2 wrestler.
Last edited by WillyM; 02/17/14 07:28 PM.
