Bryant Stats Dig: Was 2024 PA’s Junior men’s freestyle team the best ever, or not?

Fargo, North Dakota – It’s no secret how much I love this tournament. Having served a number of roles here over the past 26 years – yes, 26 years – the “when was the last time” question was frequent. That prompted me to research and build a database of the past All-Americans over a decade ago. This is one of the few times of the year where that data and information is alive. Even now, I’m still finding tweaks in the data and correcting misattributed states that were either input incorrectly or copied wrong. As I said, the information is always alive.

So when PA Power Wrestling’s Jim Beach approached me at media table on Wednesday night prior to the finals of the 2024 U.S. Marine Corps Junior and 16U Nationals, he suspected the Junior men’s freestyle performance by Team Pennsylvania was going to be close to record-setting.

Close? Absolutely. Record-breaking? Depends on how you want to frame it.

While Pennsylvania’s 19 All-Americans wasn’t the most by a state in Junior men’s freestyle history, its point total was with 278 points. It sparked a historical dive to search for what have been the most impressive Junior men’s freestyle team performances of the past 53 years. Upon diving in, it’ll be one that’s sure to add more fuel to the fire amongst the coaches and fans when the argument comes up about which state is the best.

So to do this properly, we have to analyze the current team scoring system, which takes the United World Wrestling scoring method, with a few alterations since USA Wrestling doesn’t do a double bronze and double fifth.

Champions get 25 points, runners-up get 20. Then the scoring goes 15 for third, 12 for fourth, 9 for fifth, 7 for sixth, 5 for seventh and 2 points for eighth. This scoring system started in 2021. Prior, it was an 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 point allocation. There’s no limit on how many entries a state can score per weight.

Unlike the NCAA championships, where team scoring was adjusted multiple times to account for the advent of the technical fall, changing the amount of advancement points and later placement points, USA Wrestling’s scoring system is only placement, so you can apply a current scoring method – or a past one – to the same batch of results to get a fair comparison. All team scoring “in Fargo” was unofficial prior to 2006. Any and all team championships citied all-time do include unofficial championships won “by math.”

So now you’ve gotten the boring stuff out of the way, let’s first find the top medal-winning performances and apply the past and present scoring systems.

First thing’s first, what are the top medal-winning years at the Juniors?

The most came from Illinois in 2011 and 2018 with 20 in each of those years. Pennsylvania had 19 in 2023 and 2024. No state had just 18 in a year. Illinois had 17 in 1972, as did Pennsylvania in 1993 and 2003. Illinois also had 16 in 2013 and 2017, Ohio had 16 in 2003 and Pennsylvania had 16 in 2004.

This is the one place the eras will then come into play. In 1972, there were only four placing spots. The event registered six places in published reports starting in 1974. Eight places entered the realm in 1986.

Another factor to consider are total number of entries over the years, where states were limited on how many entries they could bring and the difference in total number of weight classes. From 1971-1975, there were 10 weights. There were 11 from 1976-1986. We were at 12 weights from 1987-2001. We’ve been at 15 since 2002 when USA Wrestling went to Federation weights plus 100 pounds.

So already, we’ve got a lot of “well, what about” caveats to frame things. I also want to state that I am not formally trained in statistical analysis. There are other people in wrestling who are actual statisticians and have advanced degrees in such, so if they want to put things in scatter plots or run them through SPSS, be my guest.

Raw numbers: The best total medals performance came from Illinois in 2011 and 2018. 20 All-Americans.

Pre-2021 Team Scoring: PA2024 placements give them 104 points in the old scoring system. IL2018 has 95 and IL2011 has 93. PA1993 with three fewer weights scores 89. Now the fun one, IL1972 would score 111 points, with five fewer weights and four fewer places. The distinction there is the event only had 375 athletes, an average of 37.5 per weight. In 2024, the average weight class was over three times larger with each weight averaging 121 wrestlers.

Post-2021 (UWW) Team Scoring: When looking at these Top 10 performances, the ordering difference actually only changes in one instance. PA2004 would rank eighth in the Pre-2021 scoring format, but rank ninth in the current one. They’d flip spots with PA2003. The other eight instances would rank in the same order.  IL1972’s adjusted UWW score would be 308 points.

Here's a chart of what we’re seeing with just applying points to place.

One thing 1972 didn’t have was the depth or sheer numbers. They also didn’t have finals. The dreaded blackmark system was used in the early years to determine champions. For the uninitiated, you were eliminated from competition if you achieved six black marks. A win by a pin gave you zero black marks. A win on technical points – there were no match terminations or technical falls in that era – would give you one black mark. A tie would be two black marks. A loss by points would be three black marks and losing by pin would be four.  You could be eliminated from a tournament if you never lost a match. You could go six rounds and win them all on points and if enough wrestlers were still in the draw, you could be bounced. Does that scenario play a role? Yes and no. It was conducted in a vastly different format. If a wrestler went 6-0 and beat six wrestlers on points today, they’d likely be in the semifinals or finals. So that can potentially frame an argument where good guys didn’t place the same way, making an eras conversation somewhat relevant to the argument.

The other is the volume of competition. Even taking the fact the sport has evolved and changed over the years out of the picture, Illinois team in 1972 had an average weight class of 37 wrestlers. The 2024 field had an average weight class of 121 wrestlers. There were only 10 weights in 1972, meaning there was a tighter collection of talent. There were more in the field in 2024, meaning the potential for better competitors, but there’s also a potential for more “fluff” as one might say.

By 1983, the average bracket size at the Juniors in men’s freestyle was double what it was in 1972. Since 2021, the average bracket size has exceeded 100 wrestlers. You could argue location since Iowa, which hosted the tournament from 1971-1990, borders Illinois, but that’s more of a subjective point than one rooted in the performative data.

So in the 10-11 weight era, IL1972 stands out, but then even that era can argue the depth issue given that by the time we moved to 12 weights in 1987, the average number of wrestlers in a bracket exceeded 80.

Of the 10 teams in this breakout, IL1972 and PA1993 are the only two not with 15 weights, which means we may have to boil this down even more later on. When you move into the 12-weight era and beyond, PA1993 had 12 wrestlers in the Top 4, which is only matched by PA2024 and IL2018. The average bracket size in 1993 was 84.6, while it was 81.6 in 2018. IL2018 had eight in the finals with four champs. IL2018 also had seven wrestlers reach the seventh place match. The level of bloodround success by IL2018 was insane. PA2024 had all 19 wrestlers place in the top six with an average bracket size of 121.1.

We’ve also got OH2003 out here with five champs and two runners-up. PA2003 is the only team on this list that wasn’t a team champion, yet it’s still a top-ten performance. Does that make OH2003 stake a claim given the quality of their competitors that year?

How would you argue for your favorite team or performance? If you’re from Illinois, you can point to this data and claim victory. If you’re from Pennsylvania, you can point to this data and also claim victory. It’s not quite the Elias Sports Bureau, but we’ve still got enough subjective arguments to apply to the raw numbers to make this annual battle continue for 53 more years.