Woah, didn’t think you’d see these this year, did you? I didn’t either. With the increasing amount of EQ’s, the amount of writing and research needed to announce Barnyard (I didn’t even get to do intros because of the weather delay), and overtime needed from working in a running shop in the spring, I didn’t think I’d have the time. Thus, cutting these out looked to be a necessary subtraction. But the increasing questions, pleading, and a bit of free time opening up has led to their return. I’ll have one ranking for each event area in these weeks prior to regionals and one after the season.
The Best Crews have been a thing around here for the past few years. They take their cues from USTFCCCA’s event squads and the World Athletics scoring system, combining the two ideas in order to compare Michigan’s teams against events in their common areas.
The goal of this is to help recognize the athletes and coaches that create cultures, history, and traditions in their respective event areas. Think about it like this: Minnesota always has great hockey, basketball hoops are nailed to Indiana barns, Texas churns out football talent, every Iowa boy has cauliflower ear. Where in Michigan does hurdling reign supreme? Is there a town where kids learn to shot put before they can tie their shoes?
2023’s explanation goes through much of it, but two things have changed for 2025 (and now, 2026).
the Boys 200m points have been re-mathed and edited, as previous versions sold short athletes such as Jeremy Dixon and Jake Machiniak when it came to season end rankings.
instead of using a team’s top-four athletes to generate their total for an event, I’m using their top-three. Belleville’s hurdlers are the main reason for this, there’s no way they shouldn’t have been the top D1 squad in 2024. I feel this will better portray a team’s top athletes.
Here are the figures that show the points for each mark:
These contain results uploaded to athletic.net by Thursday (5/7) morning.
These Throw Crews are the combination of the Shot Put and Discus.
In summary, points are added for the top three athletes from a team, provided they hit the regional qualifier (the UP doesn’t have any regional qualifying marks, so I used D4’s figures). Don’t be reading this thinking you must qualify for regionals, those qualifiers are there to give teams more than two entries if they’ve got more than two quality throwers in each event. Those points are then added up across events and ranked.
Here are the regional qualifiers for each throwing discipline:
Woah, didn’t think you’d see these this year, did you? I didn’t either. With the increasing amount of EQ’s, the amount of writing and research needed to announce Barnyard (I didn’t even get to do intros because of the weather delay), and overtime needed from working in a running shop in the spring, I didn’t think I’d have the time. Thus, cutting these out looked to be a necessary subtraction. But the increasing questions, pleading, and a bit of free time opening up has led to their return. I’ll have one ranking for each event area in these weeks prior to regionals and one after the season.
An explanation:
The Best Crews have been a thing around here for the past few years. They take their cues from USTFCCCA’s event squads and the World Athletics scoring system, combining the two ideas in order to compare Michigan’s teams against events in their common areas.
The goal of this is to help recognize the athletes and coaches that create cultures, history, and traditions in their respective event areas. Think about it like this: Minnesota always has great hockey, basketball hoops are nailed to Indiana barns, Texas churns out football talent, every Iowa boy has cauliflower ear. Where in Michigan does hurdling reign supreme? Is there a town where kids learn to shot put before they can tie their shoes?
2023’s explanation goes through much of it, but two things have changed for 2025 (and now, 2026).
the Boys 200m points have been re-mathed and edited, as previous versions sold short athletes such as Jeremy Dixon and Jake Machiniak when it came to season end rankings.
instead of using a team’s top-four athletes to generate their total for an event, I’m using their top-three. Belleville’s hurdlers are the main reason for this, there’s no way they shouldn’t have been the top D1 squad in 2024. I feel this will better portray a team’s top athletes.
Here are the figures that show the points for each mark:
These contain results uploaded to athletic.net by Tuesday (5/3) morning.
These Distance Crews are the combination of the 800m, 1600m, 3200m, and 4×8.
In summary, points are added for the top three athletes from a team, provided they hit the regional qualifier (the UP doesn’t have any regional qualifying marks, so I used D4’s figures). As everyone gets a spot in the regional 4×8, there are no regional qualifiers for that event, so I calculated an equivalent based on the 800m qualifiers (last year’s numbers, as these rankings are spur of the moment and I’m lazy). Also, don’t be reading this thinking you must qualify for regionals, those qualifiers are there to give teams more than two entries if they’ve got some fast kids. Anyhow, here are the regional qualifying marks for each gender and division (plus my extrapolated 4×8 figures):
Woah, didn’t think you’d see these this year, did you? I didn’t either. With the increasing amount of EQ’s, the amount of writing and research needed to announce Barnyard (I didn’t even get to do intros because of the weather delay), and overtime needed from working in a running shop in the spring, I didn’t think I’d have the time. Thus, cutting these out looked to be a necessary subtraction. But the increasing questions, pleading, and a bit of free time opening up has led to their return. I’ll have one ranking for each event area in these weeks prior to regionals and one after the season.
An explanation:
The Best Crews have been a thing around here for the past few years. They take their cues from USTFCCCA’s event squads and the World Athletics scoring system, combining the two ideas in order to compare Michigan’s teams against events in their common areas.
The goal of this is to help recognize the athletes and coaches that create cultures, history, and traditions in their respective event areas. Think about it like this: Minnesota always has great hockey, basketball hoops are nailed to Indiana barns, Texas churns out football talent, every Iowa boy has cauliflower ear. Where in Michigan does hurdling reign supreme? Is there a town where kids learn to shot put before they can tie their shoes?
2023’s explanation goes through much of it, but two things have changed for 2025 (and now, 2026).
the Boys 200m points have been re-mathed and edited, as previous versions sold short athletes such as Jeremy Dixon and Jake Machiniak when it came to season end rankings.
instead of using a team’s top-four athletes to generate their total for an event, I’m using their top-three. Belleville’s hurdlers are the main reason for this, there’s no way they shouldn’t have been the top D1 squad in 2024. I feel this will better portray a team’s top athletes.
Here are the figures that show the points for each mark:
These contain results uploaded to athletic.net by Sunday (5/3) morning.
These Jump Crews are the combination of High Jump, Long Jump, and Pole Vault. Previous years had the vault as a standalone category, but I didn’t like all the ties that came from that, and the jumps are the closest area of events.
