About Tournament Registrations

​Some of you have had questions regarding tournaments and tournament registrations, so I hope this helps answer some of them!

Please make sure you are visiting the tournament board each week to sign up for upcoming tournaments. You can also find the tournaments posted on the calendar on our web site at swczone.com. If you click on the name of the tournament, a box opens up. If you click on the name of the tournament again, the tournament flier will come up. There you an find everything you need to know about that tournament, including:

-Start times

-Whether all wrestlers start at the same time or if there is a split session. (Split sessions don't always split groups the same way, so always read thoroughly.)

-The deadline for CLUB to register, and submission instructions for the CLUB MANAGER to follow when entering the TEAM. YOUR deadline to submit an entry to us is generally the last practice BEFORE this deadline, at 6 p.m. I submit all our entries together, with one payment. If you write a check for your fee, always make it to Spartan Wrestling, NOT the hosting club.

-Whether there are weigh-ins. The only AAU tournaments that require you to select a weight class and attend a weigh-in are: Missouri Challenge, Ozark District Championship and AAU State Tournament (Triple Crown events). For those, YOU must select a weight class for your child AND take him/her to the scheduled weigh-in. Wrestlers must weigh AT or BELOW the selected weight class at the time of the weigh-in.

-For ALL OTHER AAU TOURNAMENTS: Do not list your child's weight on the registration form. The only weight that will be submitted with tournament registrations will be the one taken by a coach at practice the week of the tournament.

Regarding beginners/rookies: All AAU tournaments will do a pretty good job of separating beginners (also known as 4s on the 1-4 rating scale or "Gold" wrestlers in Triple Crown events) into separate brackets. This is usually fairly easy to accomplish in a larger tournament such as our Spartan Kickoff Tournament. For this reason, we strongly encourage all of our Spartans, Mini and Junior, to compete in this early-season tournament to get their competition feet wet.

There are also tournaments only open to first-year wrestlers, such as the Holiday Beginner's Tournament on Dec. 8 at Whitfield HS. Although we do encourage our first-years to compete in this tournament, it is by no means the only tournament that caters to beginners. AAU is a terrific organization for beginning and intermediate wrestlers, so there is no need to only focus on beginner-only tournaments. All of the AAU tournaments will do their best to separate the beginners from the advanced wrestlers. If at any time you feel that your wrestler has been placed in a bracket that is not right for him/her, feel free to speak to the coach, the mat table or the official. We do not want any wrestler participating in an unsafe situation.

You may register for tournaments as far in advance as you wish; however, if you need to select a weight class, you may want to wait until closer to the deadline to avoid having to make a last-minute change.

If you want to sign up for several tournaments at once but write one check, please put all the registration forms together in the envelope with the EARLIEST deadline.

If there are payment envelopes in the board, feel free to use them for your registration. If not, just staple or clip your payment to your form.

Withdrawing from a Tournament
If your child is unable to wrestle in a tournament you registered for, please notify me or a coach so we can notify the tournament host. Refunds can not be made after the tournament registration deadline. (Once our roster has been submitted, we are required to pay for all registrants regardless of whether they show up to wrestle.) If the tournament is not notified in time to adjust brackets, then the wrestlers in the same bracket as the no-show get fewer matches and less value for their time and money.

Let me know if anyone has other questions!
LeAnn Cross