How to run a tournament on Smart Wrestler

Before your tournament

Everything in this part happens days or weeks ahead of the event. Get it right and event day is mostly watching wrestling.

1. Get a host account and connect Stripe

Create a normal Smart Wrestler account first, then contact us and choose Admin Account Request so we can turn on hosting for you.

If you plan to charge an entry fee, connect your Stripe account next. This is where your entry fees will land. You cannot take a single paid registration until Stripe says your account can accept charges.

2. Walk the creation wizard

Creating a tournament is eight steps. You can Save as Draft at any point from step 2 onward and pick it up later — nothing is published until you say so.

3. Set your capacity

Capacity is the maximum number of wrestlers (or teams) your event will accept. Registration stops automatically when you hit it.

It is also what your hosting fee is priced on, so set it to the event you actually intend to run. Guessing low to save money does not work — you will simply be asked for the difference when you raise it, and registration will be capped at the lower number in the meantime. See the hosting fee for what each tier costs.

4. Divisions, weight classes and gender

Divisions are either age-based or grade-based, and you have to pick one family — the two cannot be mixed in a single tournament.

• Age-based: 6 & Under, 8 & Under, 10 & Under, 12 & Under, 14 & Under, 16 & Under, Open.
• Grade-based: Pre-K through 8th Grade, plus High School.

Each division you select also needs a period duration — you can use the global default or set 30 seconds up to 3 minutes per division. Publishing fails until every selected division has one, which is the most common reason a publish attempt is rejected.

Weight classes come from a preset — Youth, High School or College — or you build your own. You can always add extra weights and a heavyweight class on top of a preset.

Gender participation is Boys, Girls, both, or Mixed. Choosing Boys and Girls together produces separate boys and girls brackets; choosing Mixed puts everyone into the same brackets. Girls may enter a boys-only tournament; a girls-only tournament does not accept boys.

5. Consents and your liability form

Three consent forms are available and all three are switched on by default. Parents must tick the enabled ones before they can complete registration.

You can also upload your own liability form as a PDF or image. Registrants see it alongside the standard waiver and can open it before agreeing.

6. Publish and open registration

Publishing is the moment your tournament becomes visible and registration opens. Before it goes through, two things are checked: your Stripe account must be able to accept charges, and your hosting fee must be paid. Both show you exactly what is missing with a button to fix it.

7. Decide who can see your roster

8. Watch registrations come in

Your Tournament Registrations page lists everyone who has entered, with filters and a CSV export. You can cancel a registration from here if you need to.

Choosing your format

Format is the single biggest decision you make, because it determines how many matches each wrestler gets and how long your day runs. Switch between them below.

Individual event or team event?

Wrestling style

Style sets the scoring rules and the corner colours. It is locked after the tournament is created, so choose carefully.

• Folkstyle — standard US scholastic and collegiate wrestling. Points for takedowns, escapes, reversals and near-falls.
• Freestyle — international Olympic style. Leg attacks allowed, points for exposure and activity.
• Greco-Roman — no holds below the waist, upper-body throws and lifts.

The week of your tournament

Seeding

Seeding decides who meets whom. You can type seed numbers by hand on the check-in page, or press Auto-Seed to have them assigned by record strength and then state rank.

Generating brackets

Brackets are generated per division and weight class. The system warns you about anything that will wrestle badly:

Locking brackets — the point of no return

Until you lock, you are in preview mode and can regenerate freely. Locking is what takes a bracket live for scoring and opens Match Control. You can lock weight classes one at a time as they are finalised, or lock everything at once.

Assigning your staff

Give your table workers and volunteers their own access rather than sharing your login. Three roles are available:

Mat setup

Set your number of mats during creation, then use the Mat Assignment page to decide which groups wrestle on which mat and in what order. Turning on the dynamic queue runs all round one matches by your group order, then moves to round two in the same order, keeping mats fed automatically.

Event day

Check-in and weigh-ins

You chose one of two modes during setup. They behave quite differently on the morning.

Your staff weigh wrestlers at the venue. No weight is collected during registration, so everyone starts the day as not weighed in and your team works down the list.

• Wrestlers arrive and queue at the weigh-in station.
• Staff record the weight, which marks them weighed in.
• Checking a wrestler in confirms they are present and ready.

Starting the tournament

Pressing Start Tournament opens Match Control and live scoring. Your roster also becomes public at this point regardless of your visibility setting, so spectators can follow along.

Running mats

There is also a full-screen spectator display for each mat that you can put on a TV or projector. It updates itself as matches progress — no need to refresh it.

Live scoring

• Start the match, then score points as they happen. The clock and scoreboard update live for everyone watching.
• Undo is always available while the match is running or paused — pause the clock, undo the mis-tap, resume.
• Pins, forfeits and injury defaults ask for confirmation, because they end the match.
• Every action is written to an audit trail, so a disputed score can be reviewed rather than argued about.

After the tournament

Completing the tournament

Pressing Complete Tournament finalises the event and sends final ranking notifications to everyone involved.

Awards and standings

The Awards page shows final placements grouped by division and weight class, plus team standings built from completed matches. Individual tables include each wrestler's record and point differential.

Exports and results

• A public results page with match results and team standings.
• CSV, Excel and PDF summary downloads.
• Individual placement certificates for wrestlers.
• CSV exports of your registrations and weigh-in list.

Reopening a completed tournament

If you spot a mis-scored final after completing, you can reopen the tournament. Matches and brackets are left intact, so you can fix the result and complete it again. Only you or a Smart Wrestler admin can do this.

Money, explained plainly

Almost every payment question we receive comes from the same misunderstanding, so start here: there are two completely separate payments, going in opposite directions.

The hosting fee — what you pay us

You pay for the capacity you reserve, not for how many wrestlers have signed up at the moment you pay. If you set your tournament capacity to 400, you pay the 400 tier even if only 50 have registered so far. That is deliberate: it means you can pay early without being penalised, and the price of your event does not creep upward as registrations come in.

When you pay it

When you publish your tournament and open registration — normally weeks before the event. You pay once and then stop thinking about it. You will never be asked for money on the morning of your tournament.

If your numbers change

Two things are blocked while a hosting fee balance is outstanding: registration cannot open, and the tournament cannot start. Both show you exactly what is owed and a button to pay it.

Entry fees — what parents pay you

You set the entry fee. On top of it, the parent is charged the Smart Wrestler registration fee and the card processing cost, so that you receive exactly the entry fee you set — you are never quietly paying our fee out of your own entry price.

Our registration fee is $2.50 per wrestler for entry fees up to $50, and $3.00 above that. Card processing varies with the amount, so it is shown to the parent before they pay.

Where the money actually goes

Entry fees are collected directly into your own Stripe account. Smart Wrestler never holds your money, and there is no waiting for us to release anything. Our fee comes off automatically as each payment is processed.

• You are the seller. It is your sale, your money, and your customer relationship.
• Payouts run on your Stripe schedule, not ours. Nothing to request, no reconciliation at the end of the event.
• Your business name appears on the parent's card statement, not ours. Worth mentioning to your families so nobody is confused by the charge.
• Card disputes are between you and the cardholder, handled in Stripe like any other card payment you take.

Refunds — you are in control

Because entry fees are your money, you issue refunds yourself. You can do it from your tournament billing page inside Smart Wrestler, or directly in your own Stripe dashboard — either way the tournament stays in sync automatically. You do not need to contact us, and we cannot issue refunds on your behalf.

You set your refund policy during setup — Full Refund, Partial Refund, or No Refunds — and it is shown to parents when they register. The policy is yours to enforce; the buttons work regardless, so you can always make an exception.

The exact fee tables and terms are in the Host Agreement.

Questions we actually get asked

Setting up

Money

Running the event

Troubleshooting

If something is blocked, it is nearly always one of these. Every one of them shows a message explaining the reason — read it before retrying, because retrying will not help.

Still stuck? Contact support with your tournament name and what you were trying to do. If it involves a payment, include the wrestler's name and roughly when they paid.