IKWF History: Blog on IKWF History

2026 State by the numbers

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 21:00:00 -0600

Now that the 2026 state brackets are set, here is a little fun with the bracket preview data, trying to understand which of the brackets are going to be especially fun to watch.

107 total weight classes (58 boys, 49 girls)
- 77 full brackets (51 boys, 26 girls)
Weights with most returning state qualifiers
- Intermediate 59 (20)
- Intermediate 64 (19)
- Girls Intermediate 62 (19)
- Senior 96 (18)
- Novice 74 (18)
- Girls Novice 90 (18)
- Girls Intermediate 77 (18)
Weights with most returning state placers
- Intermediate 64 (13, 19 returning qualifiers)
- Girls Intermediate 62 (12, 19 returning qualifiers)
- Novice 93 (11, 16 returning qualifiers)
- Girls Senior 110 (10, 14 returning qualifiers)
Weights with most returning state champs
- Girls Novice 102 (3)
- Girls Intermediate 67 (3)
Weights with most wins
- Intermediate 64 (682-167, 0.803)
- Intermediate 90 (654-186, 0.779)
- Intermediate 69 (643-164, 0.797)
- Bantam 55 (639-149, 0.811)
- Intermediate 84 (634-166, 0.793)
- Intermediate 74 (628-176, 0.781)
- Intermediate 79 (611-136, 0.818)
- Bantam 70 (603-147, 0.804)
Weights with best winning percentage
- Intermediate 79 (0.818, 611-136)
- Bantam 55 (0.811, 639-149)
- Bantam 84 (0.805, 488-118)
- Bantam 70 (0.804, 603-147)
- Intermediate 64 (0.803, 682-167)

2026 State Preview

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 21:00:00 -0600

Head to the 2026 brackets page for a preview both of your sectional brackets and of the state tournament picture (only at most 96 athletes remain at each weight statewide).

For an example sectional preview, see Intermediate 74 North:

and for an example state preview, see Intermediate 74:

Almost Done

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 12:00:00 -0500

After a super helpful summer of collecting old programs, we now have virtually ALL history of the IKWF state tournament. Huge thanks to the contributors that gave me physical copies of old programs, scanned old programs, or sent in pictures of bracket boards:

Terry Weber
Mike Urwin
Corey Atwell
Clayton Norberg
Todd Combes
Collin McKillip
Kevin Randolph

Go to the brackets page to see ALL of the years 1971 to 2025! From here I’d love more help to find competitors (or matches) from the missing years.

Team Pages

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 12:00:00 -0500

The latest update: we now have basic support for Team Pages. The goal is to get a page for EVERY club that’s had an IKWF state qualifier. For now, I’ve only done it for a select few clubs where I can easily track down the small changes in club name over the years. At some point I’ll be posting a Google Sheet that the community can crowd source fixes for duplicate club names.

Initial Launch

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 12:00:00 -0500

After weeks of hard work, we have finished processing all (available) bracket data from 1999 to 2025. These brackets are all available today (and as data comes in for more years I’ll update the brackets page):

This is just the tip of the iceberg! Now that we’ve got a LARGE sampling of bracket data, we’ll be using it to start tracking historical records for clubs and individuals. The very next things we’ll be doing are:

Brackets

Fri, 14 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0500

While the full website is nowhere near ready, we do already have a growing collection of historical brackets that can be viewed right now in their original ASCII Art glory:

1999

We haven’t yet found brackets, but we do have placers and team scores from 1999:

2000

Novice Team Scores missing
Novice 62
Novice 66
Novice 70
Novice 74
Novice 79
Novice 84
Novice 89
Novice 95
Novice 101
Novice 108
Novice 115
Novice 122
Novice 130
Novice 147
Novice 166
Novice 215
Marty Combes Award Winner: Jimmy Kennedy - Wrestling Factory of Libertyville (70)
Senior Team Scores missing
Senior 70
Senior 74
Senior 79
Senior 84
Senior 89
Senior 95
Senior 101
Senior 108
Senior 115
Senior 122
Senior 130
Senior 138
Senior 147
Senior 156
Senior 166
Senior 177
Senior 189
Senior 275
Ron Urwin Award Winner: Michael Poeta – Highland Park Little Giants (101)

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

Novice Team Scores
Novice 62
Novice 66
Novice 70
Novice 74
Novice 79
Novice 84
Novice 89
Novice 95
Novice 101
Novice 108
Novice 115
Novice 122
Novice 130
Novice 147
Novice 166
Novice 215
Marty Combes Award Winner: Lucas Smith - Bison WC (89)
Senior Team Scores
Senior 70
Senior 74
Senior 79
Senior 84
Senior 89
Senior 95
Senior 101
Senior 108
Senior 115
Senior 122
Senior 130
Senior 138
Senior 147
Senior 156
Senior 166
Senior 177
Senior 189
Senior 215
Senior 275
Ron Urwin Award Winner: Sterling Hecox - Hecox Team Benaiah (166)

Coming soon

Mon, 10 Mar 2025 12:00:00 -0500

We’ll be collecting all historical IKWF brackets and publishing them here. This may take awhile to gather old brackets from the community but it’s worth it! We’ve got brackets back to 2007 via TrackWrestling and close to full brackets for 2000-2006 (except for 2000 team scores) via the Wayback Machine.