USA Wrestling switched the order of the men's freestyle and Greco-Roman national championships this year. In the past, the cadet and junior men's freestyle tournaments would be held at the end of the weeklong wrestling extravaganza. This year, it's the cadet and junior Greco tournaments that are closing out Fargo. 

To see how that change may have affected participation numbers, we're going to compare the numbers for each style and division from 2016 to 2017. 

And don't forget that the cadet Greco-Roman and junior women's finals are this Friday and that the junior Greco-Roman finals wrap up the invididual tournaments at Fargo this Saturday morning. Watch them LIVE ON FLO.



You can check the brackets and count up the participants yourself on FloArena, or you can trust us and check out the chart below. 

STYLE	2016	2017	CHANGE	PCT CHANGE
Cadet Men's Freestyle	1124	1153	29	2.6%
Junior Men's Freestyle	1188	1143	-45	-3.8%
Cadet Greco-Roman	934	923	-11	-1.2%
Junior Greco-Roman	970	894	-76	-7.8%
Cadet Women's Freestyle	201	252	51	25.4%
Junior Women's Freestyle	404	432	28	6.9%
TOTAL	4821	4797	-24	-0.5%

The year-to-year changes are relatively minor, and one would expect there to be slight fluctuations regardless of any schedule changes. 

Nonetheless, if the change in tournament order was designed to increase the number of competitors in the Greco tournaments, it failed to accomplish it's goal, as both cadet and juniors saw decreased numbers. The junior age group of the men's freestyle tournament also saw a drop in participants, though by a lesser amount and percentage than its Greco counterpart. 

Combined cadet and junior Greco numbers dropped by 87 entrants or a little less than five percent.

Of the four men's tournaments, only cadet freestyle saw an increase in number of competitors. 

Whether due to the change in schedule or some other cause of attrition, 2017 had 103 fewer entrants in the men's competitions than in 2016. 

It should also be noted that these numbers don't take into account wrestlers who doubled up in freestyle and Greco competitions, nor does it differentiate cadets who also wrestled in a junior tournament. 

On the flip side, both cadet and junior women increased their participation numbers. Most encouragingly, cadet women had an impressive 25 percent jump in entrants in just a single year. Overall, there were 79 more competitors in the two women's tournaments from 2016 to 2017.

Those increased numbers on the women's side helped Fargo maintain a stable number of total of competitors. Numbers are down just half a percent from 2016, which translates to 24 fewer names in the brackets from last year's grand total of 4,821.

We also have data on the number of states that brought teams to each tournament. That table can be found below. 

STYLE	NUMBER OF STATES	CHANGE FROM 2016 TO 2017
Cadet Men's Freestyle	45 (-1)	-1
Junior Men's Freestyle	45 (-1)	-1
Cadet Greco-Roman	43 (-3)	-3
Junior Greco-Roman	45 (-1)	-1
Cadet Women's Freestyle	38 (+1)	+1
Junior Women's Freestyle	39 (-1)	-1

What we don't have, unfortunately, are the names of the states that brought a team in 2016 but did not in 2017 or vice versa in the case of the cadet women's tournament. 

If you can figure those names out on your own, be sure to let us know and claim your very special prize!

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