****Note I suck at math. If there are errors I apologize, they are unintentional.****
Thanks for the numbers, I hope I can follow it too. I personally think those numbers are a little bit low for 2a and 3a so I am going to bump them up a bit.
1a 1300 18.57% 41.6
2a 2200 31.43% 69.44
3a 3500 50% 112
Still skewed, but not as drastic.
7000 wrestlers statewide for 224 qualifiers giving every wrestler a 3.2% chance to qualify for state. If we become 3 classes that bumps qualifiers up to 672, which gives each wrestler a nearly 10% chance to qualify to state which seems insanely high to me. On top of that, it would give a 1a wrestler a 17.23% chance to qualify for state which seems watered down to me, a 10% chance for a 2a wrestler, and a 6% chance for a 3a wrestler. Classing with those numbers makes a random 1a wrestler almost 3x as likely to qualify for state than a 3a wrestler based solely on nothing except school size which hardly seems fair.
I know you prefer 2 classes instead of 3, and admittedly on paper if every wrestler is created equal then this would give every wrestler an equal shot. These numbers conveniently show half of all wrestlers coming from 3a, so if we were to use two classes as an example instead of 3, the best place to split it up would be 1a and 2a combined into one class and 3a in another. This would set the number of qualifiers at 448 with 3500 wrestlers per class, or 6.4% chance per wrestler. This does succeed in giving every wrestler an equal chance on paper.
The problem with this is there is 0 chance the ihsaa would allow the classification to be determined by the number of total wrestlers. Using varsity only is unfair to the thousands excluded, and in regards to population it is already pretty accurate with 13% of the population coming from smaller schools accounted for 13% of the qualifiers, so I see need to change.