Rich Bender serves as USA Wrestling's executive director (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)The decision to postpone the 2020 Summer Olympic Games came down quickly. The International Olympic Committee went from saying postponement was a possibility on March 24 to the historic decision to suspend the Games until 2021 the very next day. And now it seems like new information is coming out daily. The Games will be held July 23-Aug. 8, 2021. The spots countries have already qualified will remain so. The U.S. Olympic Team Trials will be postponed until 2021 and the latest news is that USA Wrestling has suspended all sanctioned and national events through May 10. But in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic there are important things we don't know yet. Here are five questions that should be near the top of the priority list for USA Wrestling.
When will the Olympic Team Trials be held?
We now know where they'll take place; the Bryce Jordan Center at Penn State. We know the ticket situation; ticket holders will be able to use their tickets for the postponed event or get a refund if they can't attend. But we don't know when. USA Wrestling has said it will be next year, but no date is set yet. Odds are the date will mirror dates from 2020 just as the date of the Olympics did, so look for early April. By the way, the deadline for ticket refunds is June 1, 2020.
Will NBC still carry both days, or any, of the Olympic Team Trials?
A very important question for wrestling fans not lucky enough to have a ticket. Clearly this can't be answered until there's an answer to the first question of when the tournament will be held, but Trackwrestling and NBCSN had been slated to air the full two-day event. Fingers crossed that its new date won't conflict with something important, like, oh say, American Ninja Warrior. It shouldn't be lost in the conversation how important that coverage is to the sport. It's key to drawing in new fans and through that, contributing to the viability and longevity of the sport.
How about the Olympic Team Trials field, is it set?
USA Wrestling held all of the qualifying events slated for the 2020 Olympic Team Trials except for the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships and the Last Chance Qualifier. The Last Chance Qualifier qualifies 32 spots (the top two placewinners) between the three styles for the Olympic Team Trials. Hopefully the chances are good that the Last Chance Qualifier gets rescheduled. If it does, it should take place after the 2021 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships so athletes can participate in both. Fun fact: Hawkeye Wrestling Club's Thomas Gilman was the last wrestler to make a world team after qualifying at the Last Chance Qualifier.
Should the field be expanded to accommodate wrestlers from 2020 NCAA Championships who had yet to qualify and wrestlers from 2021 NCAA Championships?
NCAA champions automatically qualify for the Olympic Team Trials, but with no NCAA tournament in 2020 any wrestler who graduated from the collegiate level and who would have been a champion, lost out on an automatic bid. An argument could be made to expand the field to at least one more wrestler at each weight class and give automatic bids to the winners from the 2021 NCAAs and the No. 1 seeds from the 2020s. Of course, this only works if the Trials are held after the 2021 NCAAs and it could open USA Wrestling up to legal action. A better solution would be to use the Dave Schultz Memorial International as a qualifier or to give one more allocation at each weight class to the Last Chance Qualifier.
Will results from the 2019 World Championships be used for bracketing an Olympic Team Trials in 2021?
As of March 27 the headline on the USA Wrestling selection procedures for the 2020 Olympic Games (now held in 2021) says "under review for amendments due to the postponement of the Games." But when it comes to seeding the Olympic Team Trials in 2021, it should be a no-brainer -- the 2019 Worlds will be the most recent championships leading into the Games. Usually the brackets are determined this way; A 2019 World Championship team member who qualifies the weight class for the Olympic Games will automatically receive the No. 1 seed at the same weight category in which he or she qualified. That wrestler will compete on the second day of the Olympic Team Trials in a best-of-three series with the winner of a day one tournament. The winner of that best-of-three series will be the U.S. representative at that weight in the Games. Seeding for the first day is determined by a seeding committee made up of one representative of each of the USA Wrestling clubs represented by athletes wrestling in the Olympic Team Trials as well as two or more athlete representatives. The seeding for the opening day follows a couple of criteria such as head-to-head matches and must have a majority vote of the seeding committee members in a meeting. No need for full details here, suffice it to say the easiest and maybe fairest thing for USA Wrestling would be to keep criteria and seeding as it was, regardless of the postponement.
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