Ah, finally a new event category! The pole vaulters get their own, which they deserve. The event uses combination of strength, speed, agility, and most importantly – fearlessness. And it’s truly like no other. You’ll get a few crossovers with vaulters that sprint or jump (or if you’re Lilliane Aittama, you do every event), but for the most part, they do their own thing.
To review, these “best crews” were started last year to try to recognize the best teams in each event area, whether that’s the jumps here, or sprints or throws elsewhere. Last year’s version was more complex and relied on having three participants in each event. I’ve changed things a bit this year, mostly to ease the process on my end and have the ability to include more teams.
Here’s the process:
Over the winter, I created my own version of World Athletics Tables, but for Michigan athletes. These are based on times/marks from the 2022 Outdoor Season throughout the US. Their purpose is to compare across events. Here are the boys tables:
There are two guidelines for being included. Your mark has to be from this outdoor season and it has to be better than the Regional Additional Qualifying Mark. Marks from this season are taken from the athletic.net performance lists. There will likely be some instances where someone has run a time, but it’s not included on that list. I can’t help that! Please contact the necessary folks to get your name on there.
For each event, with a maximum of four athletes, those scores are added together. Then within a category, those events are added together. Relays are scaled to match their importance within a meet. Often, at the state level, teams score more points from a relay than they would with four individuals running that event, so they’re given a bit more importance here.
Both the boys and girls contain meets that were posted to athleticnet as of Tuesday Night. I went five deep on the images, ten deep on the charts, with a few ties for different spots.
Since this is the singular event in the event category, I’m experimenting with the writeups. First I’ll set a baseline with some basic facts about who’s returning, then try to find different stories building up towards the State Finals.
Michigan XC Speed Ratings 
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