Kansas Wrestling Forums General Discussion High School Bracket Manipulation

I'm curious to hear other people's thoughts on this topic. At the 321-A level at least, I noticed that there have been some interesting injury defaults at the qualifying tournaments, particularly on the back side of the bracket. I suspect that some folks opted to take 4th in their district tournament to avoid being on the same side as their district's champion at regionals. And it seems that for some it may have paid off. So a few questions: Does anyone agree with my assessment? Did this happen at regional tournaments looking ahead to the Sub-state tournaments? Is this ethical? I'm not passing judgement, I'd love to hear what other people knowledgeable about the sport think. I'll withhold my opinion for now. Thanks for reading!

It absolutely is happening. If KSHSAA is going to run this clown show like it has thus far expect coaches and athletes to scout their best chance at advancing through as far as they can. Eventually the rubber will meet the road and the options to “pick your opponent “ are going to run out, but for KSHSAA to hamstring the western half of the state the way they did I don’t blame coaches or kids one bit. Guessing there will be 4th place district 1 or 2 kids beating the champions from the other regionals in the first round this week. Ethical? All in the eyes of the beholder I guess. IMO not much different than taking an inferior kid down and cutting him repeatedly just to score 20 some points on him.

I noticed at our regional we had multiple forfeits in the placing rounds. I know 1 was due to injury. 1 i believe was due to a kid not wanting to wrestle a kid they had wrestled 3 weeks in a row and beat each time handily to help with mat time exposure and trying to stay healthy. 1 I believe was because the kid felt like the kid he was gonna wrestle was wrestling a little dirty the week before and was twisting ankles after the whistle. And he didnt feel like going back out there and putting himself at risk. And I have a feeling one was to get on the right side of the bracket. KSHSAA said we have to go through all these stupid tournaments. They never said we have to wrestle every round.

KSHSAA putting your tournament on 2 mats and starting at 3 probably had some of those placement match after midnight kids saying the heck with it, I’m in. I’ll wrestle the same kid next week anyways.

I agree. There were kids wrestling their semi finals at 7:30 and their next match was at midnight.

100% have seen this at 5/6A since they switched to 2 regionals. And it’s worked out well for most with a couple actually winning state the following week.