Tournament Information for New Members
Fees: Wrestlers are asked to pay a competitor fee to register for the tournament (traditionally between $5 and $8), and spectators are normally charged between $4 or $5.
Weigh-ins: Weigh-ins normally occur between 1 or 2 hours before the tournament starts. After registering your son will be asked to take registration materials into a locker room where his weight will be noted. Some tournaments do not allow women to be present during weight-ins so please feel free to ask a coach or other male parent to assist.
AAU Cards: Most tournaments require that you have an AAU card for insurance purposes. The specific information related to purchasing AAU Cards can be found on the documents page of this website which provides directions for going out online to purchase cards ($12) for the year if you plan to compete in tournaments. The card can be printed out (I recommend that you print out multiple copies) and most tournaments will not sell cards the day of the tournament.
Brackets: Tournaments will vary the bracket system they use to determine who wrestles. The most common is a 4 man round robin where the 4 wrestles within the closest weight will be placed into a four man bracket and each athlete will wrestle three times. Five man brackets use a similar structure just with 4 matches per wrestler and an 8 man bracket uses a double elimination format. The pool of athletes are eliminated after each wrestler has two losses until a champion is identified.
Awards: Tournaments will vary the award distributions with many at least providing medals to all recipients. Some give trophies to the champion and a small number give awards to only the top 3 wrestlers. If you are attending a tournament for the first time it is best to attend a tournament where awards are given to all wrestlers.
Age Division: As the post season approaches (early March) the districts, region and state tournament are defined by established AAU age categories which specifies you must wrestler the age you are at the end of the year. If you son is currently 6 years old, but will turn 7 in December, he would wrestle in the 7 & 8 year old age group. While many tournaments apply the AAU age requirement at the very start of the season, an number of tournaments will employ an “Age Day Of” structure where you wrestle in the age division based on the age you are the day of the event. Most tournaments use the following age classifications regardless of which approach is employed and for those that I have marked with a “?” in the above table the flyer does not specifically indicate which approach is used.
6 and Under – Tots
7 & 8 – Bantams
9 & 10 – Midgets
11 & 12 – Novice
13 & 14 – School Boy
Pre-registration: Please note that because families may choose to attend a wide range of tournaments any given weekend, the club does not submit pre-registration information for individual wrestlers. Those tournaments mark with an asterisk require that you pre-register before the day of the tournament.