NCWWC Explainer - A first for many Iowa fans

Hello everyone.

We’ve finally arrived.

In an inaugural season for Iowa women’s wrestling there have been, by definition, a ton of ‘firsts’ along the way.

A first match, a first win, a first pin.

A first dual, a first home Carver-Hawkeye Arena experience.

A first national championship – courtesy of the NWCA National Duals in early January.

Reliving that championship feeling 🏆 #Hawkeyes pic.twitter.com/SOU8QHYhis

— Iowa Women's Wrestling (@IowaW_Wrestling) January 7, 2024

Now it’s time for another championship event, this one a format that long-time wrestling fans will be eminently familiar with.

It’s time for this weekend’s (Mar. 8-9) National Collegiate Women’s Wrestling Championships – also known as NCWWC’s.

Don’t worry, this is going to be something new for a lot of us – for the Iowa team, Hawkeye fans and associated media alike.

Because of that I’ve been hard at work compiling the necessary information for this very piece.

In theory it should serve as a ‘how-to guide’ of sorts for people consuming this event for the very first time. Of course, in reality it has also been just as much of a road map for yours truly as I attempt to be as prepared as possible for the two days of coverage ahead of me.

So, let’s get started.

How did we get here?

After a regular season’s worth of duals and open tournaments the Hawkeyes (and every other NCAA women’s program) had to qualify for NCWWC’s via one of six regional tournaments hosted between February 23^rd and 25^th.

Roughly 10-12 teams at each regional would compete across 10 weight classes, with the top four finishers at each weight qualifying for the national tournament.

Iowa sent a full allotment of 15 athletes (in NCAA women’s wrestling teams may qualify up to 15 for nationals) and all of them placed sufficiently high enough to earn a berth at NCWWC’s – including six champs, five runners up, a pair of thirds and a pair of fourth-place finishers.

Doing some quick math, four qualifiers per weight times 10 weight classes times six regionals makes for a grand total of 240 women (24 per weight) set to compete in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for a national title.

All told, 50 different programs will be represented – some by as few as one athlete while others like Iowa, King (TN) and North Central (IL) will bring a full 15.

Is everyone still with me?

When/where/how to watch

The full two-day schedule for NCWWC’s, set for this Friday and Saturday (Mar. 8-9) at Alliant Energy PowerHouse Arena in Cedar Rapids can be found here on the tournament website.

Barring last minute changes, this is how the competition is scheduled to take place across both days (all times Central Standard):

Friday (March 8)

Session 1: 

• 9:00 a.m. – Doors Open
• 10:35 a.m. – Opening Ceremonies
• 11:00 a.m. – Preliminary Round; First Round (Four mats)

Session 2:

• 3:00 p.m. – Doors Open
• 4:00 p.m. – Championships Quarterfinals (Mats 2 & 3)
• Consolation First Round (Mats 1 & 4)
• Consolation Second and Quarterfinals (Mats 1, 2, 3 & 4)

Saturday (March 9)

Session 3:

• 9:30 a.m. – Doors Open
• 11:00 a.m. – Championships Semifinals (Mats 1 & 2)
• Consolation Semifinals (Mat 3), once Championship Semifinals are complete will go to all three mats
• Consolation matches for 3rd, 5th and 7th places (Three mats)

Session 4:

• 5:30 p.m. – Doors Open
• 6:15 p.m. – Lineup of All-Americans, Exhibit Hall C warm-up area
• 6:30 p.m. – Parade of All-Americans, Alliant Energy Powerhouse
• 7:00 p.m. – Finals (One Mat)

For those interested in attending the event in person, you’ll find all of the information you may need on hotels, parking, tickets – of which both single and all-session varieties are still available – and much more at ncwwc.com.

Meanwhile, for those unable to catch the action live on-site every single match of the women’s championships will be streamed on FloWrestling (subscription required).

THIS LINK will take you to Flo’s homepage for the event, where a ‘watch’ tab should bring you to any live matches in progress and/or replays of completed matches if you wish to go back for a rewatch or simply to catch up on a bout you may have missed.

Or you can click HERE to go directly to the livestream feed itself.

I’d encourage folks unfamiliar with Flo (not the Progressive lady) to test out the site in advance of the tournament. The last thing anyone wants is to be scrambling to get things in order with an important match bearing down on you.

(In fact, I shudder a little just imagining it.)

Brackets

As is customary with any postseason collegiate tournament, you may want to have your own bracket in hand to chronicle the action as it goes – or at the very least have access to one should you need it.

Printable versions of all 10 brackets for the 2024 NCWWC’s can be found HERE, though I would remind you that last minute changes between now and Friday are possible in the event that an athlete pulls out of the tournament beforehand – much like this major change at 143 pounds that was first reported on Sunday evening.

Once the tournament begins, up-to-date brackets will be accessible on TrackWrestling – direct links to which have been a bit screwy in the past, so if you run into any trouble I’d recommend going through Flo’s ‘Watch Guide’ for the championships instead.

Scoring

One final piece of information that I wanted to prepare people with is the scoring procedures for the women’s national tournament.

Given the differences between freestyle (NCAA women) and folkstyle (NCAA men) there are also some minor differences when it comes to how points are awarded in a tournament setting.

(For viewers equally unfamiliar with how things go on the men’s side this will still be great information to know.)

That being said, the following key highlights come directly from the NCWWC Championship Manual, and will be worth keeping in mind as you watch things unfold on Friday/Saturday:

• Scoring wrestlers will score points for advancement, 1pt on championship side, 0.5pt on the consolation side.
• Wrestlers will score advancement points for a bye IF they win their next match.
• Wrestlers will be awarded 2 bonus points for Fall, DQ, FF, or DF.
• Wrestlers will be awarded 1.5 bonus points for Technical Falls (win by 10 or more pts)
• Placement points: 1^st=16, 2^nd=12, 3^rd=10, 4^th=9, 5^th=7, 6^th=6, 7^th=4, 8^th=3
• Wrestlers from the same team may not score bonus points against each other, only advancement points.
• Team scoring is final after the normal bracket is complete. Any true fourth matches do not count for team scoring.

To see how much of this gets put into practice, let’s examine Iowa’s Marlynne Deede and her title-winning run at 155 pounds last season during which she’d amass 21.5 team points while competing for Augsburg University.

Deede had a first-round bye, meaning she wouldn’t earn a point for advancement unless she won her next match in the Round of 16.

Deede would win that bout, securing a tech. fall over her opponent in the process. By doing so, she’d earn 1.5 bonus points for the tech, plus one point for advancing on the championship side of the bracket, plus another point for winning the match following her ‘bye.’

That made her total team points to that juncture 3.5.

She’d then win her next match in the quarterfinals, advancing via 9-3 decision. Having not earned a tech. fall or pin (1.5 or 2 bonus points for each) Deede would only add an additional one point for advancing on the championship side of the bracket – putting her total at 4.5.

The same would hold true for her semifinal match, an 11-6 regular decision victory. No bonus points meant she’d add just the single point for advancement – leaving her at 5.5.

Now in the finals, a win does not ‘advance’ a wrestler further in the bracket, thus – as is the case with all placement matches (1^st, 3^rd, 5^th or 7^th) – no advancement points are earned regardless of the result.

Instead, Deede won by 6-2 decision, earning her 16 placement points for finishing first (as opposed to 12 for finishing runner-up).

What is 5.5 + 16?

21.5.

The NCWWC Instagram page has a really handy infographic that highlights all of this information (and more), which I’d encourage folks to check out.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3-81o2R-DC/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

It also has another that summarizes the methods by which points can be scored by wrestlers in an individual match – a useful guide for any of you who are still a bit new to the freestyle scene.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C39HURFsb9P/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

The final scoring procedure that I want to explain regards the presence of multiple wrestlers from the same team in the same bracket.

As I mentioned earlier, this will be the case for the Hawkeyes and their 15 total qualifiers at five separate weight classes.

Only 10 wrestlers may score for a team at the national tournament, and just one per weight class.

Using 101 pounds as an example, where Iowa enters NCCWC’s with the two top-seeded athletes in the bracket (#1 Emilie Gonzalez and #2 Sterling Dias), only the points amassed by the top scorer of the two will count toward Iowa’s final team total.

A similar scenario – this one at 170 pounds – could encompass one last tournament scoring procedure that was mentioned in the Championship Manual highlights I listed earlier.

Iowa has athletes seeded first (Kylie Welker) and fourth (Haley Ward) in the weight class, potentially putting them on a collision course for the semifinals. In the event that said matchup occurs, the winning teammate would only be permitted to score points (one in this case) for advancement, not bonus.

This rule prevents a coach from ‘match fixing’ by instructing one of his/her athletes to intentionally get pinned/teched in the interest of their advancing teammate tacking extra bonus points onto their eventual contribution to the team’s total score.

So, in this hypothetical instance, whether Welker won by fall, 10-0 tech, or 2-1 decision (or vice versa) the absolute maximum points she could add to her tournament total would be one – for advancing on the championship side of the bracket.

Hopefully I’ve explained this scoring ‘stuff’ to a somewhat comprehensible degree.

(This assumes I’ve got a firm grasp of everything myself…)

Of course, if the minutiae aren’t really of great interest to you anyway, you can always just follow along with the live team scoring updates as they’re released by any number of sources throughout the tournament (i.e. the University of Iowa, FloWrestling, TrackWrestling, the NCWWC itself, etc.).

Lasting lesson

The last thing I want to do is make this event feel any less accessible to folks who may be coming to it from a more novice point of engagement.

If I’ve done so with this article, shame on me.

Instead, I very much hope that this has provided all the baseline information one might possibly need to enjoy the women’s national tournament to the utmost degree. If you feel as though I’ve left something out, or that you would benefit from further and/or better explanation of a certain issue, please don’t hesitate to reach out either through social media or on the Hawkeye Report message board.

This was a venture embarked on with you, the fans in mind. You’re not going to hurt my feelings by letting me know that I could’ve done an even better job carrying out that particular mission.

Anyway, that’s about all I’ve got.

Please check back in later this week for my comprehensive breakdown of the tournament itself. There are TONS of Iowa-related storylines to touch on across all 10 weights, not to mention a compelling race for the team title into which the Hawkeye women will enter as decided underdogs.

As always, thanks for reading, and I’ll talk to you again real soon.