It's at the Heartland Events Center in Grand Island Nebraska. A terrific venue and you will get the real feeling of a State tournament.

Must qualify at your Districts.

This is a 2 day tournament this year but if you're bracket is 8 man or less it will be completed on Saturday. That means only one night in hotel so adjusted accordingly. Brackets will be out by Friday and you will be able to see you're bracket on line at trackwrestling.com

Here's the link to the State Tournament

http://nebraskausawrestling.org/folkstyle.htm

If you want to weigh in on Saturday morning from 6am to 7am, you may. See FAQ on the link for information.

http://nebraskausawrestling.org/folkstyle_faq.htm

This tournament can qualify you for the NE USA Middle school National teams that we have taken to Danville, Il. for the last 10 years. See thread on this forum.

The District tournaments are done. Now it's time to sign up for State. There were over 1100 kids across Nebraska that participated at a District tournament. Congrats to all the State qualifiers.

Fred,

If you had 1100 kids participate at districts what do you think the numbers at state will be?

Is there a way you can post all of the district placers?

To guess conservatively about 700. I know District 5 is bringing over 125 kids. Some of the other districts won't bring quite as much but I would bet District 8 would bring close to 100. The other districts probable 75 a piece.

That's doesn't include High School division. We normally get 80 to 100 kids for HS.

Deadline is March 16th. Don't wait too late cause we are putting participants names on the back of the event shirts. Don't miss out.

Here's the new National team gear for Nebraska USA and all the Dual teams.

http://nebraskausawrestling.or...f/NE-USA%20Flier.pdf

The elem. Dual teams also get selected from state? Top 3 or how does that work?

Top 3, but there are challenge matches between some grades in the elementary. Specially at the lighter weights.

Also have alternate positions available.

Yep I'll have some National team gear on display there.

Do coaches need to have a USA card for this weekend?

quote:

Originally posted by AG JAYS:
Do coaches need to have a USA card for this weekend?

Not necessarily. If you have a coaches card you get in free each day and you only pay $5 for a floor pass. If you don't have a coaching card you pay to get in like everyone else and you pay $10 for the floor pass.

Okay since I am not going to be attending the USA State meeting I am going to give my input here, and my opinions. My input is going to be strictly limited to the USA State and District events as those are the items that I see needing the most change/improvement. To start I like the idea of a competitive state youth tournament, and I think that this type of tournament can help to elevate wrestling in the state. However, the current format that is in place is does not set up a competitive state youth tournament and creates more problems than it solves in my opinion.

District tournaments and the way that they are currently set is the largest contributing factor. None of the district tournaments draw large enough numbers to fill the state slots allotted to each district. True some brackets have more participants, but each district can qualify 232 wrestlers and that only includes 1st -8th grades, district 8 actually gets 348. This means that multiple slots are unfilled or filled just by having a wrestler signed up. The state tournament has 1972 qualifying slots awarded to district qualifiers but yet the hope this year is to have the biggest draw so far of about 700 wrestlers including PreK-K and high school divisions.

Why have 8 districts and give more qualifiers to two districts who have not had great attendance at their district events? District 8 qualifies 6 in each bracket, 348 total, and only had 170 participants in their tournament? District 6 qualified everyone who signed up, since they could not even get enough to participate to have a tournament. Districts 4 & 5 have higher attendance, around 200, but can’t send as many wrestlers? Why? The choice if you keep district tournaments needs to be only qualifying the top half of the wrestlers in a bracket with a max number of 4. Any bracket with 2 would qualify 1, 3-4 would qualify 2, 5-6 would qualify 3 and 7 or more would qualify 4.

Districts should all be held on the same weekend, not spread over several weeks. By spreading the district tournaments over several weeks it splits clubs off from tournaments that they would otherwise attend and limits attendance at district tournaments by competing with other club tournaments. The constant changing of tournament dates each year makes it hard for clubs and wrestlers to plan on attending district tournaments. If districts weekends were set in the late summer to early fall, clubs and wrestlers could plan for this event in advance and there would not be the numerous conflicts. Many major tournaments set dates for the next couple of years so that everyone can plan accordingly, setting a few months in advance does not seem like an unrealistic request. Communicating changes has been a real problem this last year and should not be a reason that a wrestler does not attend an event.

If the goal is not to fill all of the slots and or not have competitive state tournament then why are there districts at all? I think that until the State tournament numbers increase to having most brackets at least half full then district qualifiers need to be eliminated. Use another means of qualifying for the tournament such as overall record, placing at different tournaments or just opening it to everyone.

The other problem with the state tournament is the fact is run over 2-3 days. This is a huge time and cost commitment for a family any time let alone in the current fiscal times. I do appreciate that there have been some accommodations made to allow for Saturday morning weigh ins, but most will still weigh in Friday night requiring a night stay and then have to stay Saturday night to wrestle Sunday. Everyone is preregistered for this event and all brackets are by set classes, so I guess I do not understand why weigh ins need to be completed 2 hours before wrestling begins. The brackets can be set before weigh ins since the event is preregistered with set classes and you must qualify. Why not move the weigh ins back to cut off at 8:30 this would allow more people to avoid the expense of a hotel stay. And to avoid the second nights stay why must the event be run for two days for a division? Several tournaments with similar numbers or more, Westside, Monarchs, Lincoln Wrestling Club, Lincoln Warriors, Bryan, Fremont, run good tournaments in one day so it can be done. Why not do this with the state tournament?

I really do like the idea of the competitive state tournament and I know you cannot just make it happen in one or two years, but I think that the way the current tournament is run makes it difficult to attract the number of wrestlers it should. The district tournaments award unequal slots to the number of wrestlers at events and in brackets, plus in some places they lower attendance at current club tournaments. The state tournament is spread out over too many days increasing the cost to a point where many choose not to attend in part due to that cost. I think this tournament can work, but most of these issues need to be addressed in order for that to happen. Best of luck on this years tournament.

First point- We started off with 8 districts one year ago and said we would give it 2 years and then make adjustments from there. This is the second year. It's on our agenda for Saturday night and I believe we may be dropping to 6 districts.

Second point- Districts were held over a 2 week span this year which was better than last year. We would love to have districts all on the same weekend next year and this too is on the agenda for the meeting Saturday night. Although if we take a weekend early in the season for districts most clubs have a predetermined date set every year for their clubs whether it's posted on the website or not. Coordination with the district clubs is important not just taking a date early before any other club.

Third point- The idea of a qualifier is catching on in some of the districts. I really think it's a matter of marketing the district tournaments. Some are doing better than others. Kids in my district were so excited about being a State qualifier just like big brother. Qualifiers need to stay and we will evaluate them again in 2 more years.

Fourth Point- It's a 2 day tournament for only brackets that have more than 8 kids. That would be 16 man brackets or more. At that point those brackets are best run in a 2 day format anyways. The Pre-k, 8-man or less and High School division will all be done in 1 day.
This is also on the agenda for the meeting and the discussion is going to be on doing certain divisions on Saturday and the rest on Sunday which would make it a 2 day tournament but 1 day for all divisions next year.

I believe we will have 700 to 800 kids this year which is a good 1 year increase. We have continued to increase each year. With the new venue and real feel of a State tournament the kids and parents are going to like it.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Fred Franklin
NE USA Kids Director

The biggest deterrent can be a poorly ran tournament which parents don't tolerate as seen yesterday at the AAU State tourney.

quote:

Originally posted by 525:
It's a 2 day tournament for only brackets that have more than 8 kids. That would be 16 man brackets or more.

Question to this point. How are the parents going to know what size bracket their wrestler is going to be in? I just got a call from a parent this morning asking iff they should get a room for Saturday or not and knowing their situation an extra night is going to be a strain.

Registration closes on Wednesday night and you will be able to get on trackwrestling to see how many kids are in each weigh class after that. I believe it's going to be released to the public at 11:59pm or something like that. They can adjust accordingly.

Thanks I will pass that along.

Any chance someone can get elementary kids weighed in at the event center after 8pm Friday night for those going to another tournament that night or are we stuck taking them there early Saturday morning?

I'm sorry Eagle1 but if I were to say yes to you then we would have to do it for all. Again, I'm sorry just trying to follow the rules that were set forth.

See ya there.