Nothing makes coaches angrier than a draw that looks rigged: the two best athletes meeting in the first round, or three athletes from one club all in the same quarter. A fair draw follows a few simple rules, and it can be checked afterwards. Here is how the draw works on Routte.
Seeding: the strongest apart until the end
Seeds are placed in the standard order used in most sports. In a bracket of 8, the slots go 1, 8, 4, 5, 2, 7, 3, 6 from top to bottom. The result:
- seeds 1 and 2 can only meet in the final;
- seeds 1 to 4 can only meet from the semi-finals.
The organiser chooses how seeds are set for each category: by rank, by hand (for example from last year's results), or at random.
Byes: never two in one place
When a category is not a full 4, 8, 16 or 32, some athletes go straight to the second round. These byes go to the top seeds, and there are never two byes in the same first-round position, so nobody gets a free ride to the semi-final while others fight. With a random draw, the seed numbers are drawn by lot first and the same rule applies.
In single elimination the first round holds only real bouts; an athlete with a bye simply starts in round two.
Club separation: club-mates meet as late as possible
Athletes from the same club should not knock each other out early. When the organiser switches on club separation:
- two club-mates go into opposite halves, so they can only meet in the final;
- three or four club-mates are spread across different quarters.
Seeding always comes first. With seeds by rank or by hand, athletes are only swapped within the same seed band (1, 2, 3 to 4, 5 to 8 and so on) and only with someone in the same bye position. Club separation never moves a top seed out of place.
Formats
- Single elimination: lose once and you are out. The final loser takes silver; bronze goes to the winner of a third-place bout or, without one, to both losing semi-finalists.
- Double elimination: an athlete has to lose twice to be out, with a losers bracket and a grand final.
- Round robin: everyone meets everyone, best for small categories. Medals are decided once every bout is done; equal records are split by head-to-head.
Every draw can be checked
Each time a bracket is generated, Routte keeps a record: who made it, the format, the seeding method, whether club separation was on, the number of entries and the random number used. With that record, the same draw can be produced again exactly. If a coach questions a draw, the organiser can show how it was made. When the organiser swaps two entrants by hand after the draw, that is recorded too: who swapped whom and when, next to the places as drawn.
A bracket can be drawn again until the first real bout has a winner. Byes do not count as started.
Publish when you are ready
Until the draws are published, the whole draw stays with the organiser and the approved referees, and each club sees only the brackets of the categories its own athletes or teams are in. After publishing, every bracket is on the event's public page, with each athlete's competitor number next to their name, and parents can follow results as bouts finish. The athlete search finds an athlete's categories and brackets by name or number.