I wish I could tell this grand tale of how I’ve been planning to write these through the entire winter, how I’ve done my research, received all sorts of anecdotes. But in all honesty, this idea came to me last week and I think it’ll be good. Different, jarring, and never before seen in my analyses.
The original thought was to grab everyone’s best mark throughout the season and find the expected number of points generated from past athletes who have hit that mark. You’ll see this in other sports, for example, if a football team gets the ball on the 38-yard line, there’s an expected number of points they’ll attain on that possession. The downside of solely relying on someone’s PR is that they may be inconsistent. If you have a thrower whose best toss is 60’, but the rest of their throws are between 45’-50’, they’ll be ranked above someone who always throws 59’. But the 59’ thrower will likely win given their reliability.
One could take the above scenario and come to that conclusion via their personal thoughts. That’s never been a favorite of mine. What am I gonna do, predict a kid to win based on my own opinion? I can see that for pro athletes, but not high schoolers. Could it be done through a blend between numbers and subjectivity? Perhaps, but those blurred lines make it difficult for a coach, kid, or parent to discern the difference. And while these previews and rankings may cause dismay and spark motivation, it’s important to know they’re all number-based, taken from the times and marks posted this season.
After laying down the foundation for what I’m NOT doing, what the heck are these? This is something I’ve always wanted to perform – a Monte Carlo Simulation. What’s that? I’ll just quote the GOAT, TullyRunners:
Essentially what’s being done is I’m taking everyone’s results this track season, getting their mean times/marks, the standard deviation of those times/marks, then letting the computer generate random times/marks given the mean/stdev. From there, running 100 simulations of each event to generate the average amount of points to expect, an All-State %, and a Win %. Ideally, I’d run 10,000+ simulations but given 17 events across 4 divisions and 2 genders, I’m just looking to finish the damn thing.
I will cut off the expected points and percentages by a certain mark. I’m not about telling a kid they have no shot of scoring points or attaining All-State. Some of the numbers generated indicated those figures but this is the case where I’ll go against them – if you’re in the competition, you have a chance. I believe these will be a great indicator of the overall team scores, but I have no evidence for that, we’ll see come June 4th.
With the number of ties in the vault and high jump, I won’t do these, but for other events, I plan on laying down tables to show head-to-head matchups throughout the season. I’ll also look to create a few graphs of athletes that may be underrated in the simulations, by way of a great late season peak compared to their early season performances. I haven’t decided if I’ll do that after these are done or throughout each and every post. Finally, I posed a question on the Michigan Track/Cross Country Coaches FB group asking if a coach had athletes that greatly outperformed their seed at Regionals or have battled adversity on the path to a breakthrough. Quite a few responses and messages, as a result, interspersed throughout these posts will be shoutouts to kids. Of course, if you want to send me info on an athlete via twitter/IG/FB/email, I’m always game.
The thought behind starting with Pole Vault is that I feel it’ll have the least number of scratches. Same with the other field events. Distance events and relays most likely have the most, so I’ll get to those at the end. And relays have the added bonus of different lineups throughout the year, so I’m still uncertain on how to approach those events. I’ll be posting these throughout the next 10 days. Alas, here we are, your Pole Vault Preview. Hope you enjoy!
A few more individual notes:
Boys are listed first, being that they’re running first in 2022.
These will be listed from Division 4 first to Division 1 last. Gotta get eyes on the lower division that they might not normally receive
The order for posts will be Vault, Throws, Jumps, Hurdles, Sprints, Distance, Relays.
The vault here is through this weekend’s meets.
The reason I’m spreading these out over the next 10 days is two-fold. First, no one will read the entirety of a 20 page post on all events. Second, increase the hype and attention toward all events!
For running events, I’ll be using FAT times only for sprints and hurdles, and all wind conditions. There just aren’t enough samples of wind-legal times. Hopefully this will be rectified in the coming years.
I really wish there were more CONTENT and stories, but I haven’t established those relationships with areas other than distance. I do encourage media members to write about the other events!
Division Four
Boys
This is a show of someone’s average place/score. For instance, if an athlete has a 50% chance of winning, 25% chance of finishing 2nd, and 25% chance of finishing 3rd, their average place would be 1.75. Their average score would be 8.5.
Name
Team
Avg. Score
TJ Brink
Akron-Fairgrove
6.28
Isaac Bowden
McBain Northern Michigan Christian
5.93
Brayden Clark
Carson City-Crystal
4.75
William Brown
Deckerville
4.73
Isiah Biers
Coleman
3.84
Steven Martin
Britton Deerfield
3.15
Logan Malloy
Marlette
2.15
Drew Armbrustmacher
Fowler
1.28
Joel McKay
Muskegon Western Mich. Christian
1.24
Tyler Izydorek
Marlette
0.93
Kaleb Spahr
Pittsford
0.84
Wyatt Wesley
Morrice
0.79
Trace Juergens
Fairview
0.75
Drake Buell
Martin
0.64
This is an athlete’s %chance of finishing in the Top 8.
Name
Team
All-State %
Isaac Bowden
McBain Northern Michigan Christian
99
TJ Brink
Akron-Fairgrove
97
William Brown
Deckerville
95
Isiah Biers
Coleman
69
Brayden Clark
Carson City-Crystal
68
Logan Malloy
Marlette
65
Steven Martin
Britton Deerfield
63
Tyler Izydorek
Marlette
35
Drew Armbrustmacher
Fowler
30
Joel McKay
Muskegon Western Mich. Christian
28
Trace Juergens
Fairview
24
Wyatt Wesley
Morrice
22
Kaleb Spahr
Pittsford
20
Nathan Lott
Webberville
19
Drake Buell
Martin
17
Kable Miller
Coleman
12
Cooper Bolton
Montabella
11
This is an athlete’s %chance of winning the whole thing.
Michigan XC Speed Ratings 
4 thoughts on “2022 State Meet Preview: Pole Vault”