Frequently Asked Questions about Wrestling - Tournaments and Matches

At tournaments he is paired up by age and weight. You can find the details at Team Georgia, the organization that runs youth wrestling in the State. The national sanctioning body is called USAW.

The tournaments are hosted by schools or wrestling clubs all around the State. You need to register online before noon on the Thursday before the tournament. Once registration closes, the kids are grouped by age and weight and then a bracket is published. Brackets are usually made up of 8, 16, or 32 kids. You can go online and see who your son will wrestle in the first bout. These tournaments are double elimination. If your son loses twice he is done for the day. If he keeps winning he’ll advance to the finals. Medals are given to the kids that finish in the top 4 places.

Some tournaments are run with as few as 4 mats and some with as many as 12. There could be 500 wrestlers there which makes for a lot of excitement.

Your coach will tell you which tournaments we’ll attend as a team and he will make sure your
son knows what to do.

Your son does not have to go to any tournament if he doesn’t want to. We go as team but the kids are competing individually.

That could happen.

It’s your job to teach him to do his best and not get too discouraged. There are “beginner” tournaments where only kids who are new to wrestling are allowed to compete. He should start there, but there is no guarantee he will win there either. The other difference in “beginner” tournaments is that they are “round robin” format instead of brackets. Kids are grouped by 5 and everyone wrestles each other. It means he stands a better chance to win a bout and he won’t be wrestling kids with years of experience.