Handle small weight classes and combine brackets

Small weight classes are normal. Youth divisions, girls’ divisions, and the heavy end of almost any bracket sheet regularly come in with two or three kids. You have three ways to handle them:

• Keep the class and pick a format that fits. Two or three wrestlers can still get real matches and real places.
• Move a wrestler to a neighboring bracket. Bump the lone 52 up to 56.
• Combine two brackets into one. Put the 52s and 56s together.

Snapdown has no single “combine weight classes” or “merge brackets” button. You combine by moving wrestlers, and the bracket they land in grows to fit. The sections below cover each option.

Find the small brackets

On Brackets, any bracket with two or fewer wrestlers is counted under Too few participants at the top of the list. Click it to show only those brackets, then decide what to do with each one.

Keep the class with a format that fits

Snapdown already picks a small-bracket format for small classes:

• Two wrestlers get 2 Man Best of 3 by default. If one wrestler wins the first two, the third bout is skipped automatically and the bracket places. If you’d rather run a single match, change the format to 2 Man Place 2.
• Three wrestlers get 3 Man RR Place 3, a round robin where everyone wrestles twice.
• Four wrestlers get 4 Man Place 4, or 4 Man RR Place 4 if you prefer everyone to wrestle everyone.

To change one bracket’s format, turn on Edit, open the bracket’s ⋮ menu, choose Bracket settings, and pick a new Bracket Type. The picker offers the formats in the event’s Individual Bracket Formats list. See Choose a bracket format manually.

Move a wrestler to a neighboring bracket

Turn on Edit on Brackets, open the wrestler’s ⋮ menu, and choose Move to another bracket…. You can also use Move to bracket… from the wrestler’s menu on Roster.

The list starts with brackets in the current division and older or higher-grade divisions. Choose All brackets to see everything. Each card shows how many wrestlers the bracket has, their weights and ages, and any fit warnings. If the bracket is full, the card tells you what it will become, for example Becomes 3 Man RR Place 3. Pick one and choose Move Wrestler.

Two things that surprise people:

• The bracket they left doesn’t shrink on its own. The empty spot becomes a bye. Use Review downsizing on Brackets to switch it to a smaller format, or delete it if it’s now empty.
• Moving doesn’t change the wrestler’s weight class. Their roster entry still says 52. If you want it to say 56 too, use Set Weight Class from their menu on Roster. When Snapdown asks whether to take them out of their current bracket, choose Leave In Bracket.

Combine two brackets into one

To put the 52s and 56s together, move each wrestler from one bracket into the other. The destination grows as they arrive: two plus one usually becomes a three-man round robin, two plus two a four-man bracket, and so on.

When you’re done, the bracket you emptied is still there. Select it with its checkbox, choose Delete, and type DELETE to confirm. Then rename the combined bracket so the tables and fans can tell what it is, such as “52/56”. Rename it from Bracket settings with Bracket Name.

If you haven’t created brackets yet, there’s another route. Use Set Weight Class on Roster to put the kids in the same class, then create brackets with Add Populated Brackets by Weight Class. That way the brackets start combined.

Combine age groups

Moving works across divisions too. Pick a bracket in the other division and the wrestler’s division entry and registration move with them.

Moving a kid up to an older or higher-grade division is the usual case, and those brackets appear in the starting list. A younger division is shown with a review warning, and a girls-only division won’t accept a boy when the wrestler’s gender is known. There’s no way to fold one whole division into another in a single step, so move the wrestlers who need a new home.

A wrestler with nobody to wrestle

Snapdown won’t invent an opponent. A bracket with one wrestler stays under Too few participants, and the choice is yours: move them to a neighboring bracket or handle them under your tournament’s rules.

After brackets are published

You can still move wrestlers and combine brackets after publishing. Snapdown names the published brackets the change touches and asks you to confirm. It blocks the move if a bout in either bracket is on a mat right now; finish or clear that bout first.

Then publish the change the usual way. Only the brackets you changed can get new bout numbers; every other bracket keeps its numbers and mat spots. If a changed bracket was already printed, Snapdown lists it under Reprint. See How do I change brackets after publishing matches? for the steps.

Combining brackets vs combining schedules

Merge live assignment groups sounds similar but does something else. It combines the queues that feed the mats so two parts of the tournament can share mats. It doesn’t change who is in which bracket.