Does anyone “official” audit the strength of a district or region to be sure that a team of teams are fairly represented at state? For example, looking at the rankings, many of the top 10 kids in 4A come out of the region that Sunnyside, Hanford, ML, and Chiawana are in. If their region is notably tougher than other regions, then some of the better wrestlers in the state may not get out of their region (I’m saying the obvious here; I know).

Conversely, if a region is weak as a whole, many kids who likely shouldn’t be at state get there and get pinned twice and go home. I know most know this has been an on-going complaint with little solutions offered.

The biggest issue I see, however, is how it affects the state contending teams. If one region has only one or two powerhouses in it, it will obviously send more kids to state than another powerhouse that has ridiculous competition in its region—They will also have higher seeds on average. That’s not a reflection of who are truly the best teams in the state. One team walks in more kids to score more team points than another who has a brutal region, and also has easier first-round matchups to win more matches dominantly. That’s not even close to apples to apples unless I’m missing something?

I’d like to extend that to individual districts. If one district has a couple horrible teams in it (or even just one), then the other teams will have an advantage at regions. Does anyone outside that district ever pay attention to the worst teams in the state and why they are bad year in and out to perhaps do something about it? The kids in that school district are the ones getting cheated the most.

A few years back, we had to skip regionals and make state a 32 man bracket. All teams had a better opportunity to fairly compete for the state title. Why don’t we have 2 regions instead of 4 and keep a 16 man bracket at state? Send the top 8 out of each region? seems like that would allow all the best kids in the state to compete at state vs having the powerhouse teams clog up 2 of the 4 spots in many of their regions—leaving perhaps a couple top ten kids out of state. All four kids placed in the top 6 out of one region one year so we are excluding some of the state’s best kids every year because their one region is so gnarly.

I can’t find a reason why 2 regions isn’t the best scenario for the sport as a whole, but mostly for all the kids getting an equal opportunity to get to and maybe place at state. Regionals would be just as entertaining as state too.

What am I missing?