Originally I was not going to spend any time on the subject of trending and session scheduling because that is what gave each tournament a unique feel. Again some tournaments have it down to a science and others are in dire need of help.

A few years ago our tournament looked like:

Mat 1 (Large Mat) split 4 ways
Mat #2 split 2 ways
Mat #3 not split
Mat #4 not split

That gave us 8 mats

This whole process is based on the use of our Tournament entry spreadsheet and the use of one of our bracketing spreadsheets which Round-Robin Bracket Spreadsheet or 8,16,24 and 32 Man Bracket Spreadsheet. This whole guide is more of a high level use of these two individual tools, but we will add a few of our lessons learned to help you on your way to running a good tournament. The other good news is other then the printing of the check-in/weigh-in cards the learning curve is so small that most people can figure it out without any training.

You might ask yourself why this whole process came about? We are sick of commercial companies taking money that can be used to help youth wrestling, sick of parents leaving tournaments early because they are running so far behind schedule.

Tournament Entry Spreadsheet & Mail Merge

Using a nice little feature in Microsoft Word called "Mailings" in combination with Avery 18163 2x4 Labels we can take data entered into a spreadsheet and print a nice little index card for use in our bracket room.

So to explain how this works you will need to download two of the documents I created.

• Tournament entry spreadsheet
• Label Template - Avery 18163

The Avery 18163 can be purchased for approximately $6.22 per 100 labels. So if you have 500 kids you need 5 packs of these labels. The other thing you will need is the generic index cards these labels where these labels will be applied. The truth is you do not need the labels and just print directly to the index cards if you printer can handle it, but most people have problems doing this so it is just easier to print to labels.

16 Man with wrestle-back and cross-over Bracket Spread Sheet

Our 16 Man bracketing spread sheet is extremely simple is design and can help you run those bigger wrestling tournaments. Most commerical wrestling software packages try to do too much and in my opinion do it poorly. This free spreadsheet is so simple even someone just basic computer knowledge can be up and running in a few minutes.

The main page you enter the Tournament Name, the Weight Class then for each competitor enter the Wrestler's Name, the Wrestler's team name and his seed. Once this is completed you have a choice to Sort by Seed or Sort by Random. Once this is complete move onto the Match 1-8 tab and print the first set of bout sheets. Your ready to start the tournament and as the matches complete go into the Bracket tab and click the advancement button to advance the winners, continue until match 8 is completed, then open tab for Match 9-16 and print those bout sheets. You repeat this until the bracket it completed.

In reality there is more to it then that, you would need to use one spread sheet per weight class per division. Yes this can get complicated if you have multiple divisions, but if you are organized you could save your tournament a lot of money instead of paying for one of those commercial products.

Check it out, it is free to use.