Congrats to the Frankenmuth girls and Alma boys on the overall titles. Also, take a peek at those teams in the 2nd slot, St. Louis’s boys just had their best team race of the year, peaking at their usual right spot. And Freeland’s girls have been putting together top-10 type efforts over and over lately.
*** = Team State Title type of performance ** = Top-10 Team type of performance * = Team Qualifier type of performance
Ahhh, the final week of rankings. Thanks to all for following along. Coming off the huge first October weekend, many teams took this past weekend off, getting their last good training block in before their league/regional/state meets. The ones that did race saw some movement – the higher divisions at Gabriel Richard, the lower divisions at Macomb County and Greater Lansing.
If you’ve followed these over the past few years, you may know the gist of these, but let’s break it down once again:
The individual ratings take into account all the meets listed here. There are a few meets missing that I’ll link to, but pretty much any meet with a significant number of athletes will have been calculated. An individual’s rating takes their best 75% of rated races (rounding up, so 4 of 5, 5 of 6, etc.), weighs them with more recent races having a higher weight, then spits out a final rating. The team rankings score those individuals as if they were in a meet against their entire division.
As a result of taking into the entire season into account, the rankings will be more conservative and less reactionary than most. Putting together a great performance once will bring about a tiny bit of movement, doing so repeatedly will elicit much greater change.
There are a few changes from previous years:
No more ratings of weekday, conference meets
Why? One, often these aren’t raced all out and end up underrating a runner. Two, to lessen my workload. I’d rather concentrate on these rankings and use the weekend invites that are more likely to be raced hard to determine the rankings.
Using the top 75% of races instead of 67%
Why? If I’m gonna use fewer overall races from a runner’s resume, I have to make up for it in some way.
No more individual rankings posted to social media
Why? I hate instances where a runner stagnates or falls back over the course of the season and it’s posted for the world to see. I recognize people want to know where they’re ranked, so just having it on the website is a happy medium.
Posting these one division at a time
If you’ve noticed, I always go Division 4 first, trending towards Division 1. This is done intentionally! Traditional media always focuses on the larger schools. By focusing on the smaller divisions first, they get the love that they might not normally receive.
Unfortunately, the injury rule is in place, where if I don’t have a rating from the past month, that runner is taken out. If you’re willing to share (and I can understand why not – someone’s medical situation doesn’t have to be the public’s business) that your athlete or you yourself are healthy/injured, feel free. There are some exceptions based on situations that make sense. Hopefully these don’t rub salt in the wound of someone who’s already hurting.
Now I need to be serious for a minute. These are for fun. If you don’t like these fun rankings, you don’t need to participate, you don’t need to call me names, talk trash to your fellow competitors, or send rude emails. We good here? Enjoy.
So I know from past experience that these next 2.5 weeks will be hell. League Meet ratings, more Championship projections, Championship ratings, Regional projections, Regional ratings, State projections and State previews. If I’m behind this week, it’ll bleed into next. The writing takes the most time on these rankings and tends to put me behind. But it’s necessary as a way to separate the work I do from just listing numbers and times. In anticipation of staying on top of things these next few weeks, I’ll be omitting the writing aspects. Luckily, I’ve written a ton on the top teams and top individuals, so when State Week comes around and those lengthy State Previews need to be written, there will be plenty of content.
