The Middle School State Qualifier Dilemma

[Slop Drop and Roll]

I just wanted to hear peoples feelings on the qualifiers this year.

The idea of having 2 qualifiers may have been the idea to remedy to the Tulsa dilemma.
On the other hand an expanded MS team state will take so many good kids out of the opportunity for that 2nd qualifier. With the qualifier now being top 4 advance to state instead of top 8 like last year. 

I feel like on the first qualifier you’ll have a huge turnout between the kids that are wrestling in the MS state and the handful of redshirt kids that are homeschooled with some local kids mixed in.  
Then the next week while so many good wrestlers are at team state, you’ll see possibly a handful of Tulsa kids then a bunch of local kids from programs that aren’t traditionally strong. Meaning there is a distinct possibility many kids that would have otherwise not made will be there and some pretty solid kids may be left out. Or some kids may opt out of team state even. 
The way it is structured is a max possibility of 32 kids per weight. I just feel like the tournament could handle a max of 64. I mean there used to be brackets into the 80s a couple years ago. 
Im not gonna lie, my kid is an on the cusp/ bloodround type kid.. Beaten a bunch of medalists including champs but he himself has not been a state medalist. I know there are several kids like mine out there. Deserving of the opportunity even if they aren’t a top3 guy perhaps.. good day, right draw though could be on the podium. 
Not to mention kids that may have to choose between team state or a qualifier. Or kids that went to Tulsa but would like to wrestle for their school the week following week but can’t because they must make it to the qualifier.  
I really don’t hate the idea of a qualifier. I guess with everything else that is happening during those weeks I hate the timing of it and the fact that only top 4 qualify. I’m not saying I want it watered down but some 5 seeds from qualifier placed last year. Am I looking at this wrong?it just feel like the timing of it all is off to me, and this year could be more complicated than plugging in Tulsa kids at State. 

[TripleB]

I know they say....no exemptions... but last year exemptions were given. If Brackets don't fill up to 32 they let kids in. 

 

I had a kid place last year that didn't get to compete at the qualifier b/c he was medically cleared. 32 didn't sign up so he got in and went on to place 8th. 

[Slop Drop and Roll]

Right I mean there are kids that qualified like 5th pl in the qualifier and then placed in the state tournament. Just feel like this year could lead to some good kids not make it in. 

[MatTime]

The qualifiers are an issue this year. We want a good event but it is scheduled between Tulsa, Team State, and Nationals. Many of the top tier kids and potential placers are doing these events but then have to do separate weighins and compete in qualifiers to compete in middle school state. 

 

Some adjustments should have been made to make it easier for kids that are wrestling a national schedule to participate in this event. 

 

Not sure why there is a hard line on not being more accommodating. Going to have some upset people whose kids are ceded but run into an unceded kid in the first or second round that couldn't do qualifiers because they were at Tulsa and at team state. 

 

[nmsmelby]

Qualifiers are a great idea, but are disorganized and very little info is put out.  Heck they're not even on track yet 

[Justin Ratliff]

2023 933 kids in qualifiers (I believe this may have included the kids that were Tulsa kids that were allowed in last year)

 

2024 903 kids in first week of qualifiers (4 more qualifiers to go)

 

I think that there may be less kids in the qualifiers this week due to MS State Duals and Kid's Folkstyle Nationals.  However, even if they have 150 kids per qualifier, that would put the number at around 1500 kids.  That would be a 60% increase participation from last year?  I will give you a little less than that for the kids that may try to qualify again this week.  But the increase can't be denied.

 

What is Indiana's weakest link for wrestling?  Is it youth?  No way, we have all kinds of training and events for these kids.  Is it HS?  No way.  We have 3 teams this year represented among the top of the nation.  It's middle school.  The red headed step child.  Middle School is where many start their career.  So they end up way behind our wrestlers who have grown up on the mat.  Then you have the all of the different weights, different starts/ends to the season throughout the state.  MS is just weird.

 

Now you have more of these middle school wrestlers getting USAW cards and competing against better competition.  We all saw kids that have never been and wouldn't think about competing at MS state.  Now they may have set a goal for themselves to get more training or train after the MS season ends.  They might just want to get more involved in going to USAW tournaments since they have a card now.

 

Let's continue to watch how this plays out.

[Silence Dogood]

Does anyone know how seeding for state will work? Is it based on placement at the qualifier?

 

I saw some situations where a wrestler A beat wrestlers B and C on the way to qualifying the first weekend and then wrestlers B and and C placed higher the 2nd weekend than A did the first weekend.

[MatTime]

I believe seeding for MS state will be based on the USA pin numbers. Which means placement at the qualifiers do not matter. 

[ugotstuck2]

22 hours ago, MatTime said:

I believe seeding for MS state will be based on the USA pin numbers. Which means placement at the qualifiers do not matter. 

What exactly is the “pin system”? 

[Y2CJ41]

18 minutes ago, ugotstuck2 said:

What exactly is the “pin system”? 

https://www.themat.com/news/2023/september/29/pin-ratings-to-separate-athletes-at-national-and-regional-events-pin-of-all-members-available-through-sortable-online-database

 

 

[MatTime]

USA wrestling has a adopted a pin system for seeding at tournaments. Here is the link to information on the USA Pin Rating. If you click on the link provided in the text, then click on "Pin Rating" you should be able to find the pin ratings you are looking for. 

[ugotstuck2]

Thank you!!

[MatTime]

The Pin System is a good idea in the long term but seems flawed at the moment. It relies on kids entering USAW sanctioned events that count toward the pin. Many kids do not do enough of the events to effect their pin number or they happen to do well enough to get an inflated number that places them higher than they should be when being seeded. When looking at the pin number compared to the number of matches a kid has wrestled that count toward the number, you can see a disparity. A kid that does not wrestle as many matches may have a higher pin than a kid that does. Its no different than the star ratings on track profiles. 

 

If you look at some of the MS aged brackets from Kids Nationals you will see kids with the #1 and #2 seeds losing in the first round to the unseeded eventual champion or top 3 placer. 

 

In a year or two the pin system should settle itself and will be a good objective way to seed, but is it a fair way to seed at the moment? Shouldn't other criteria be taken into consideration, ie., past MS state performance, ISWA placements, head to head matchups, etc.?

 

Just some questions that came up while trying to understand how the pin system is working using Kids Nationals as a reference. May be worth a look for the organizers of MS State. 

 

Also, does anyone know if the composite pin will be used or just the Folkstyle number?

[Y2CJ41]

They should group kids by something like the following and let Track sort out the rest.

1. Previous MS Top 2
2. Previous MS Top 5
3. Previous MS Top 8

4. Qualifier Top 2
5. PIN
 

[MatTime]

That sounds too reasonable, need to stop that...someone will catch on

[ENoblewrestling]

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.

Edited January 31 by ENoblewrestling

[Justin Ratliff]

2 hours ago, ENoblewrestling said:

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.

That's because Indiana has been on the forefront with PIN's.  There has been testing done on the results and it's really accurate.  And it will only become more accurate.

 

At the national level there will be some hiccups as some states aren't known for participating in USA events as much as others.  But that will even out as those things happen.  It favors who you beat, not my kid was a "national" champion in a weight class of two.  However, if those states want to get good seeding in bigger national events it will behoove them to participate at more USA national events at least.  

[Justin Ratliff]

On 1/24/2024 at 6:11 AM, Justin Ratliff said:

2023 933 kids in qualifiers (I believe this may have included the kids that were Tulsa kids that were allowed in last year)

 

2024 903 kids in first week of qualifiers (4 more qualifiers to go)

 

I think that there may be less kids in the qualifiers this week due to MS State Duals and Kid's Folkstyle Nationals.  However, even if they have 150 kids per qualifier, that would put the number at around 1500 kids.  That would be a 60% increase participation from last year?  I will give you a little less than that for the kids that may try to qualify again this week.  But the increase can't be denied.

 

What is Indiana's weakest link for wrestling?  Is it youth?  No way, we have all kinds of training and events for these kids.  Is it HS?  No way.  We have 3 teams this year represented among the top of the nation.  It's middle school.  The red headed step child.  Middle School is where many start their career.  So they end up way behind our wrestlers who have grown up on the mat.  Then you have the all of the different weights, different starts/ends to the season throughout the state.  MS is just weird.

 

Now you have more of these middle school wrestlers getting USAW cards and competing against better competition.  We all saw kids that have never been and wouldn't think about competing at MS state.  Now they may have set a goal for themselves to get more training or train after the MS season ends.  They might just want to get more involved in going to USAW tournaments since they have a card now.

 

Let's continue to watch how this plays out.

Update:

 

1600 wrestlers in the qualifiers.  Not sure how many of those were kids trying to qualify the second time around.  But that is a lot of kids wrestling at a MS tournament like this that would not go to state.  We all saw those kids participating.  And a lot of kids getting USA cards that did not have them before.  1209 kids got USA cards during the previous 20 days.  That's 14% of the total state valid USA cards.  

[Y2CJ41]

3 hours ago, ENoblewrestling said:

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.

Can we test these rankings and let Henry wrestle Tylin Thrine to see if these ratings are correct?

[MatTime]

I think using the pin rating as "a" data point but not the only data point would be prudent when seeding the MS state tourney as the pin system has not balanced out yet. What @Y2CJ41 suggested above seems more reasonable. 

 

The more matches that count toward the rating a kid has, yes, the more accurate the pin number will be. But surely penalizing a kid that has a few hundred matches with a high pin number by giving them a lower seed than a kid with way fewer matches but a higher pin is not what is intended. 

 

Just something to ponder in hopes of a good accurate seeding for the MS tourney. 

[Y2CJ41]

3 minutes ago, MatTime said:

I think using the pin rating as "a" data point but not the only data point would be prudent when seeding the MS state tourney as the pin system has not balanced out yet. What @Y2CJ41 suggested above seems more reasonable. 

 

The more matches that count toward the rating a kid has, yes, the more accurate the pin number will be. But surely penalizing a kid that has a few hundred matches with a high pin number by giving them a lower seed than a kid with way fewer matches but a higher pin is not what is intended. 

 

Just something to ponder in hopes of a good accurate seeding for the MS tourney. 

The best thing is to separate the kids as best possible with the least amount of bias. If three kids all were top two last year they should be the top 3 seeds. No need to sit and argue about some ratings, let the computer randomly draw them as 1-3. Go on from there.

[bville152]

im sorry guys im a little off subject but is there seating at the fieldhouse or do you need to bring your own chairs thanks

[Slop Drop and Roll]

I did the 120 class just to see how the PIN would likely seed things out and I’d say it was pretty predictable by names with a couple outliers.  For example little Hockaday (which I suppose I should  give him his own identity as Ryan) is a good wrestler and a qualifier champ, state placer in ISWA looks like he would be the 17th best PIN.  I went through his track history to find out why he would be so low. Looks as though he didn’t compete for a couple years and that hurt his PIN rating. Even though it has nothing to do with the wrestler he is now. Really outside of him you could certainly make the argument it was close. I suppose as mentioned returning placers should be automatic seeds. In the case of 120 Strayer predictably has the best PIN and was a MS champ last year. Xavier Flores while not a qualifying Champ has placed many times between ISWA and MS I believe and has the 2nd best PIN followed by Gavin Mason (iswa champ) Lathan Janes multiple time ISWA placer so there is a reasonable argument it got it pretty close…not withstanding the outlier in Hockaday

( I found the PIN for 23 of the 32 qualifiers)

[jay_flo78]

10 hours ago, bville152 said:

im sorry guys im a little off subject but is there seating at the fieldhouse or do you need to bring your own chairs thanks

You'll want to bring your own chairs.  The tournament is held between the field house and main gym.  The main gym has typical bleacher seating while the fieldhouse (SAC) has portable bleachers that fill quick and are not comfortable.

[jay_flo78]

To add more to the dilema. I saw on FB someone complaining about a kid qualifying for 126 and was allowed to register at 120. I did my research and found out that it actually occured. It looks like the "wrestlers will only be able to register for the weight class they qualified for" doesn't matter.  

 

I'm not a fan posting kids names, so I'll refrain from posting screen shots.