Bracketing Procedures

1. We list all entrants in each group by weight, lightest to heaviest.  Then using a few principles we start to look at the club of  each wrestler. Here's what we try to do.

2. First we try to establish 8 man brackets with 5lb or less top to bottom. This is about what you see all year and normally through the core of a group, we keep weight differential much closer, to around 3lbs or less.  To accommodate late entries we try to leave a bye as 6th seed every 3rd bracket.

3. Then we try to move members of the same club to different brackets if possible. This is normally not a problem except at the extreme weights of an age group.  We don't want kids to come 150 miles or more to wrestle a fellow club member.

4. After splitting club members, I will try to also move young men who have likely wrestled each other often during the season to separate brackets. For instance, I hate to see a kid from Cozad come all the way to Omaha to match up against one from Lexington. Or two cross-town kids from Lincoln or Omaha match up. In doing this I try to keep the metro/rural balance if I have any way. If I move out a Cozad boy, I try to move in someone from that area as opposed to a Lincoln or Omaha wrestler. Part of the attraction of Huskerland State is to wrestle new competition as much as to win. The real goal is to prepare each wrestler for his future high school career. If two from the same club are in the same bracket I then look at records. I'll move the poorer record down or the best up.

5. I also check to see if any one has indicated they were a Huskerland placer the previous year. I don't want brackets with 3-4 champs in them if I can avoid it.

6. Finally, and this is lower on my priority list, I try to balance records within any given bracket. I don't want a bracket with 8 competitors who have won 80% so good wrestlers fail to place; or one with all 40% winners . I want to be fair to those who've done well all year, yet give those with lesser records a chance to place by beating some good kids, not just beating 3 fair/poor wrestlers.

7. Then at last I/we get down to actually seeding and pairing each bracket. At this point I look at records and rank them 1-8, then pair as in any high school tournament. However I almost always give precedent to a wrestler with more matches and slightly lower winning percentage. A 75% record in 70 matches will be considered better than an 85% record over 25 matches. #1 meets #8, #5 meets #4 in the top half, and the bottom is done accordingly as well. If I was unable to separate wrestlers from a single club into different brackets , I'll place one in the top and one in the lower half of the bracket. Due to this practice there will be deviations from pairing by records only.  One note here: every year there is a significant number of entrants with no record listed. This will typically get you a 6th seed, and you'll have to wrestle your way through numbers 3-2-1. Its usually better to send in some record, even the 33% minimum.

8. Before committing to final pairings, I do one more quick check to make sure weight variances are acceptable( usually less than at any time during the season), that teammates are separated, and that no bracket is either top-heavy nor appearing overly weak.
   
   Once finalized, all brackets are written, paperwork prepared and I get ready to hear complaints from 3-4 of you every year. Those 6th seed byes begin to fill up as soon as we finish, with incoming late entries filling those slots. This is where you may hurt a wrestler if the first 2-3 bye slots are filled with other late entrants ahead of you, and it does happen. You can end up having to go up 6-7 pounds, so get those entries in on time, and do it through the club director, not individually.
   
   One final thing that is factored in: your hometown. Towns like Greeley, Kearney, Ogallala have established histories as  towns with good wrestling programs.  A wrestler from such a town will be given the benefit of doubt over one from somewhere else with an identical record.
   
   Mistakes happen, and situations arise where we could have done better, but all in all we are pleased with only 5-6 complaints from 12-1500 entries.  So at least you each know the criteria used and will hopefully understand how the pairings are established. Fred Hall, Huskerland Tournament Director

Fred Hall, Huskerland Tournament Director fhall@huskerland.org