IHSA

IHSA Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes - 2006-07

Boys Wrestling Advisory Committee

April 18, 2007

The IHSA Boys Wrestling Advisory Committee met at the IHSA Office, Bloomington, Illinois, on Wednesday, April 18, 2007 beginning at 10:00 a.m. Committee members present were: Peter Alber, Dakota; Jeffrey Bowers, Bloomington; Corey Christenson, Pontiac; Mark Gervais, Chicago (Marist); Tim Haak, Harvard; Mark Ruettiger, New Lenox (Lincoln-Way Central); Ronald Ryan, Mt. Olive and Jon Wagner, Edwardsville (H.S.). IHSA Assistant Executive Director Dave Gannaway was also in attendance.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS RECOMMENDATIONS:

1. Item V.-A., 1b) Tournament Assignments and Seeding Meetings

Recommendation: Each Sectional would seed all teams that are assigned to that Sectional Complex. The top four seeded teams would be sent to different Regionals. All other teams would be assigned by geography to the Regionals.

Rationale: This would allow for the better teams to be separated and create a better Dual Team Sectional tournament. The seeding could be used to determine which Regionals would wrestle against each other in the first round of the Dual Team Sectional tournament. This would allow for having two officials on the Class AA Dual Team Sectional championship match.

Tabled

2. Item V.-B. 1) Tournament Assignments and Seeding Meetings

Recommendation: In the Regional Tournaments, four wrestlers in each weight class should be seeded in a meeting of coaches called for this purpose. Whenever possible, the top four seeded wrestlers will not wrestle until the quarter-finals. This seeding session should be held on Thursday preceding the regional tournament. Only extenuating circumstance should require a seeding meeting to be conducted on another date. A scratch session shall be held immediately following the conclusion of the weigh-in and the start of the tournament, and brackets shall be reseeded if a seeded wrestler withdraws.

Rationale: This will put all the seeding meetings on the same date and clarify in all publications the correct date for the Regional seeding meeting.

Rejected

3. Item V.-B. 3) Tournament Assignments and Seeding Meetings

Recommendation: Sectional champions will be separated and ranked one through 8 by a point criteria developed by the wrestling advisory committee. Each weight class bracket would have the following top bracket 1, 8, 4 and 5, with the bottom bracket having 2, 7, 3 and 6. The second and third place finishers in a given weight class would be placed in the opposite bracket of the sectional champion.
In the preliminary round of competition, sectional champions would receive a bye and the sectional runner-ups will be matched with third place finishers.

Rationale: This could be done very easily by creating a point system that could be assigned to each wrestler. A point system would only consider what happened the previous year and this year. As an example, it could have categories such as 25 points for last year’s state champion at that weight class, 20 points for being a state champion at any weight class last year, points assigned for placing 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th last year at that weight class, points assigned for placing in any weight class the previous year, points for the number of wins accumulating this year, points for being undefeated this year, etc. This would separate wrestlers and create a bracket for that weight class to allow for the better matches to occur during the semi-finals and finals. Other sports seed state final individual tournaments and with these procedures, it would be a process that is very explainable to anyone on why someone was rated 1 thought 8.

Tabled

4. Item VII.-A. 2), 3) and 4) Advancement of Winners

Recommendation: 2) Class A Sectional to Class A State Final: First, Second, Third and Fourth winners from each weight class will advance from Sectional to State Final competition where 16 wrestlers in each weight class will compete for championship honors.

3) Class AA Sectional to Class AA State Final, First, Second, Third and Fourth winners from each weight class will advance from Sectional to State Final competition where 32 wrestlers in each weight class will compete for championship honors.

4) Alternates: If any of the three winners from the Regional Tournaments should be unable to participate in Sectional tournaments, alternates shall be selected. The preceding tournament manager shall select the alternate using guidelines as follows:…..

Note: This deletes having an alternate for the state final tournament. A bye would be given to the first round wrestler if a qualifying wrestler could not compete for that specific first round match.

Rationale: This would allow for more schools to have participants in the state final event, since wrestling does not meet the criteria necessary for expanding to three classes. It also will provide for all wrestlers to have a first round match. In the previous system the sectional champions were all given a bye the first round. To provide for this to happen, the State Individual Wrestling Tournament would need to expand to Thursday with weigh-ins on Thursday at 2:00 p.m. with wrestling starting at 4:00 p.m. with Class A matches on two mats and Class AA matches on four mats.

Rejected

5. Item VIII.-G. 3 Tournament Rules

Recommendation: In all individual Regional Tournaments, scoring shall be: First place, 14 points, Second place, 10 points, Third place, 7 points and Fourth place, 4 points. All brackets will be scored as an eight person bracket. If any pigtail matches are necessary (in brackets that would have nine or more wrestlers) scoring for the pigtail matches will be only advancement points (2 points) and bonus points. The first pigtail match would feed into the #1 seeded wrestlers bracket, the second pigtail match would feed into the #2 seeded wrestler’s bracket etc.

Rationale: There has been lots of confusion with the previous method of scoring. This will clarify how scoring is to be done at each Regional Wrestling tournament.

Approved

WEIGHT CONTROL PLAN RECOMMENDATIONS:

1. Growth Allowance: All wrestlers will receive growth allowance after January 1 for any weight
class that they have made scratch weight at. No growth allowance can be given to a wrestler at any weight class if they have not previously made scratch weight one time for that specific weight class... This means that consecutive day allowance does not count as a scratch weight weigh-in. This will clarify when a wrestler can take growth allowance for a given weight class.

2. Minimum Weight Class: All wrestlers’ minimum weight class must be established on or before
the Individual Regional Wrestling Tournament. This will make sure that wrestlers have dropped to their minimum weight class in a manner that meets the IHSA weight control decent plan.

ITEMS OF GENERAL DISCUSSION:

1. The Wrestling Advisory Committee would like to get the approval of exploring moving the Dual
Team State Tournament to Week 29 of the IHSA calendar. This would be the third week of January. The Sectionals would be either Tuesday and or Wednesday with the State Finals that weekend. The schools would enter the Dual Team separately from the Individual State Tournament and sectional complexes would be set up for qualifying for the Dual Team State Final with the teams that have entered the IHSA Dual Team Tournament.