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.

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.