Competitive wrestling meets take one of two forms. Dual meets pit team against team with wrestlers from each weight class competing against one another. In a tournament, like a high school state championship or a mid-season collegiate invitational, wrestlers in each class are ranked and placed into a bracket. Winners advance, while losers are eliminated. Determining the field at a wrestling tournament involves a seeding and bracketing process that rewards performance.
Who Decides The Bracket?
National Collegiate Athletic Association rules require a tournament committee of at leas three people that address all disputes, violations and questions about the tournament itself. One of their primary duties is the verification and seeding of each weight class's bracket. USA Wrestling rules stipulate the need for a chief pairing master and pairing teams to select and monitor brackets as well as ensure record-keeping.
How Big Is The Bracket?
USA Wrestling and NCAA brackets are dependent on the number of competitors entered. USA Wrestling bracket sizes come in eight-, 16-, 32- and 64-person sizes. Depending on the size of the bracket, bye rounds may be necessary to accommodate the field. Brackets in the college division also follow the same sizing structure, with byes assigned to fields where the draw is not four, eight, 16, 32 or 64 people.
NCAA Bracketing
NCAA tournaments seed competitors in each weight class by their ranking. Wrestlers in the field are placed in order by the tournament committee, using record and ranking as criteria. The wrestlers are spaced out evenly through the bracket to prevent the top two wrestlers from meeting until the championship bout.
USA Wrestling Brackets
USA Wrestling tournaments randomly order the bracket pairings. Most tournaments use computer-aided bracketing, where the positions are determined by random assignment. In tournaments where no computer is used, the rules authorize paper lots to be drawn. Only Olympic division wrestlers are seeded. These rules are included in the USA Modifications section of the "USA Wrestling Rule Book & Guide to Wrestling."
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