District 11 Makes Major Changes

District 11 will make major changes to its teamwrestling tournament and has tweaked its power-rating formula for district seeding for this scholastic year.D-11 chairman Bob Hartman, the athletic director at Whitehall, announced the changes in a wide-ranging conference with area media and other district officials this afternoon.

While several sports underwent minor changes, the wrestling team tournament will look very different.

Instead of being a 10-team tournament in each class, 12 teams will now qualify in both Class AAA and Class AA. The teams will not be seeded by a committee as they were in the past; instead D-11’s power-rating system will be used to rank the teams.

The tournament will also now be a double-elimination tournament from the quarterfinals on. The consolation winner will meet the loser of the championship match in each class, with the winner of what D-11 is calling “the ultimate qualifier” claiming the second berth in the PIAA state tournament.

To accommodate the extra teams, the tournament will no longer be a Friday-Saturday event at Freedom High School. Saturday’s matches will remain at Freedom, but the opening matches will be shifted to Thursday night at two sites; the higher seeds in each class if possible or sites selected to maximize the take at the gate and minimize travel. Thursday matches will not be double elimination and will serve to trim the field from 12 to eight teams before Saturday.