Most of what I know comes from the 8U, 10U, and 12U rankings as that is where my children are at.
The pin ratings seemed to do a pretty good job of projecting the field at ISWA state last year. I don’t believe they will be as accurate at MS State or USA Nationals, because of some of the intricacies of the rankings that I have noticed.
1. They seem to heavily favor Indiana wrestlers. At 12U 5 of the top 10 national are Indiana Kids. 4 of the top 10 in 14U. All of the kids that are ranked highly are really good wrestlers, but there are some kids out there who do not do as many USA events that kind of fall through the cracks on the rankings.
2. They really seem to favor first year kids in a division. At 12U 5 of the top 10 are first year kids, again all tough wrestlers, but I don't know if the abilities of the second-year kids are accurately represented. Is a kid who placed top 3 in 10U expected to do better than a kid who was top 8 as a first year 12U?
3. They are not overly responsive to losses. This is a positive and a negative of the system. My son recently took some tough losses to kids he had either beaten a few times before, or had beaten kids who had beaten another wrestler. He lost twice, but still has a higher PIN because it is based on the overall body of work, which can be a positive depending on how long the PIN take to change... I am not sure how much results from several years back still play into the total pin ranking, or should play into it, but they don’t seem to drop a wrestler quickly because of a single recent result.
4. There are some wrestlers who are still ranked highly that do not do many events any longer. Often they were high placers as younger kids, but do not participate all that often any longer.
5. I do not believe they take age groups into account. If you look at the overall Indiana top 10. It is Mason Parris, Jesse Mendez then a mixture of kids from different age groups. That works pretty well for specific age groups but will cause more noticeable problems as the age groups, and weights mix. For example, a 1st year 12U with a high pin ranking should hold their own at say 65 lbs. A first year 12U with a high PIN could be seeded above second year 14U's or even some 16U's at let’s say 120 and I would expect the results to look much different.
Either way it will be interesting to see how it shakes out this weekend.