OK I was bored & stuck at home today with the snow, so I looked through all of the brackets. There was talk earlier this year about consolidating the state tournaments from 4 divisions to 3 divisions. Based on the records of kids in this years' state tournaments, I would say there may be some justification for combining the 5A and 6A divisions.
I counted 19 undefeated wrestlers in the state tournaments. Of these, 5 are in 3A, 7 in 4A, 3 in 5A, and 4 in 6A.
There are 31 wrestlers with just one loss (11 in 3A, 10 in 4A, 6 in 5A, and 4 in 6A)
This alone, to me, would be enough proof to consider consolidating 5A and 6A into one tournament because it would even out the number of elite (for lack of a better word) wrestlers in each division (assuming you consider 0 or 1 losses to be an "elite" wrestler). If 5A and 6A were combined, that would put 16-17 undefeated or 1-loss wrestlers in each division.
Then I looked at it from the other end of the spectrum by counting the number of losing records in each division. I know this happens on occasion, but it seems like it should be pretty rare since the state tournaments should be reserved only for the best wrestlers. I was a little shocked at the numbers on this. There are 61 wrestlers in the state tournament with losing records!! Nothing against these kids, they still earned their way to the tournament. But the proportion of losing records is highly skewed to the 5A and 6A tournaments. 3A has 10, 4A has 3, 5A has 22, and 6A has 26.
I would welcome any comments/thoughts on this. And I'll put in my vote again for having Salina host at least the 4A state tournament in the future. And if 5A/6A were combined, Salina could probably handle both tournaments simulatenously. But that's another topic.
Good luck at state everybody.
