Don’t leave integrity of state tourney to luck

ANCHORAGE — Prep wrestling fans eager to catch some of the top-ranked wrestlers meeting on the mat during the ASAA/First National Bank State Championships better get to Bartlett early.

Otherwise, they might just miss it.

Want to see Service’s John Pounds, the top-ranked wrestler at 132 pounds, meet up against third-ranked Spencer Adams of Colony?

Ready to watch Colony’s Simon Root, the No. 1-ranked grappler at 170, face Service’s Frankye Dunbar, ranked third?

How about Kenai’s Ellery Steffensen, ranked first at 138, against third-ranked Anthony Sierra of East?

Well, if you aren’t at Bartlett High School for today’s 10 a.m. preliminary round, you’re going to miss them.

All of them.

Alaska School Activities Association, the governing body for Alaska high school sports, has changed the way it fills the brackets for the state wrestling championships. Gone is the old (and apparently inconvenient way) of sitting down and ranking the wrestlers and manually seeding the bracket. Now in each of the 15 brackets, only the champions from the four conferences (Northern Lights, Cook Inlet, Southeast and Mid-Alaska) are seeded. The only catch is the No. 1 and No. 2 wrestlers from each conference are on opposite sides of the bracket.

The remainder of the 16-man bracket is filled randomly. Twelve of the 16 spots are left completely up to chance.

It’s like rolling the dice.

Wrestling coaches from across the state have argued this change for months. Their opposition to the change grew even larger after watching 1-2-3A programs endure this during the small-schools championships in December.

Large-schools coaches have feared the worst, and those fears were realized when ASAA released the official brackets for the tournament on Thursday.

Let’s just say some top wrestlers in the state will be in great danger early today.

In the first round there are 17 matches that include wrestlers currently ranked top 6 in the state, according to akmat.org, an online Alaska wrestling database and excellent resource for the sport.

If that’s not enough, three wrestlers seeded No. 1 will face a wrestler ranked third in the state in his weight class in the first round.

Yes folks. That is No. 1 facing No. 3 in the first round.

Kind of takes away from being the top seed, right? I always thought being the top seed was kind of a good thing. In two other weight classes, 160 and 285, the top seed will face wrestlers ranked fourth and fifth in the state respectively.

The 138-pound class will be particularly interesting. Four of the top five wrestlers in the state will be wrestling in two first-round matches.

“Unfortunately, we kind of knew this was going to happen,” Palmer head coach Dale Ewart said. “That’s why we’ve been complaining about this thing for quite some time. We knew it was going to be a possibility that was going to happen, and it did.”

Today’s preliminary round will certainly be like no other.

“That first round is going to be exciting,” Ewart said. “There are semifinal matches in the first round.”

Exciting, yes, but Ewart and his fellow coaches believe this change is doing a disservice to the athletes.

And they’re right.

These ranked wrestlers have put a season’s worth of work — a year’s worth of work — into becoming a top athlete in their class. A wrestler’s opportunity to line up for the state finals might be in jeopardy if he meets a state-final worthy opponent in the first or second round.

That’s unfortunate.

It may be exciting in the first round, but could set up a disappointing final round.

I know you have to beat the best to be the best. But imagine if the NCAA followed ASAA’s lead and randomly seeded the Division I basketball tournament. Imagine if basketball fans were given No. 1 Michigan against No. 3 Indiana on Day 1 of the tourney. How about No. 2 Kansas against No. 5 Duke?

What if you were watching your potential Final Four on the first Thursday of March Madness?

Do you want to see the top two wrestlers in the state at 220 — Colony’s Ian MacKenzie and Service’s Derek Zorea — meet in the finals Saturday night?

Well, you’re not going to. If MacKenzie and Zorea do wrestle, it will be in the second round today. Maybe the best possible match in that weight class will be done by noon.

How will this impact the team standings? This could be one of the more exciting races to the team title that we’ve seen in recent years — with schools like Wasilla, Colony, Palmer, Service and South all with legitimate chances to be the last team standing. All it takes, though, is one No. 1 seed getting beat by a No. 3 seed to kill a team’s chance to win the tournament.

Contentious, marathon-like seeding meetings reportedly led to this change. Coaches are going to fight for their athletes. There’s nothing wrong with that. Coaches face the same issues in all-conference and all-state selection meetings. It’s just part of the territory.

Wrestling programs are now mandated to use trackwrestling.com to track their wrestlers. All the programs are required to use it.

Well, there you go. All your information is available right there.

Why not use that to help seed the bracket?

If ASAA officials do not want to be responsible for seeding the tournament, form an independent committee. Appoint a director of that committee who is responsible. The Alaska wrestling community is rich with people who have spent their lives trying to help the sport grow and flourish in our state.

Prep sports is about the athletes and those involved need to do whatever possible to benefit the athlete — not just leave it up to the luck of the draw.

Contact Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.