Stat Attack: District One State Qualifying

At this time of year, everybody’s got big dreams of making states. Underdogs have emerged after a summer of hard training and the favorites are bidding their time, waiting to strike at the perfect moment. As we await the final weeks of October when those spots are officially earned, everyone’s favorite activity is speculating wildly about who they think will get in this year. For now, I won’t do that (talk to me in a week or so and maybe I will), but instead I decided to compile some stats form the past five seasons worth of District One qualifiers to let you all determine for yourself which teams will be on the starting line in Hershey.

Here’s the quick overview. I looked back at the District One Championships (run at Lehigh) from 2012 through 2016 (i.e. the years since we moved to three classifications) to take a look at things like average time, average points, average spread and others. In total, that’s a sample size of five years and 25 state qualifying teams. Let’s take a look at some of the key stats I gleamed.

Out of 25 different state qualifying teams, there have been just 11 schools that have actually earned the spots. Henderson and CR North have made it 5 teams each while DT West has made it 4. There’s over half of your qualifiers right there. The Ches-mont has given us 11 qualifiers, Suburban One League boasts 10 and the Central the remaining 4. The Pioneer (home to Spring Ford, Boyertown and Owen J Roberts) has had none in the past five seasons. In fact, the Pioneer hasn’t had a AAA team in the state champions since Perkiomen Valley in 2008 (they took 4^th behind state champ Jimmy Tarsnane).

If you want to be district champion, history says you have to average sub 15:50 on the quick Lehigh lay out. Only once in the past 5 years has the district champ run over that time, in 2014 when Conestoga averaged 16:13. That 2014 Conestoga squad is the only district champ that didn’t finish as state champ in Hershey. And how about this – the #1 runner on the D1 champs has taken 1^st, 1^st, 2^nd, 2^nd, 3^rd in five years. That’s an average of less than 2^nd.

Front running is a key part of success. Think of it this way, out of the top 5 finishers in each of the last 5 seasons (a sample size of 25) a total of 16 have been on state qualifying teams. That’s 64%. Flip it another way and you will see that there have only been three occasions where a team has made it to the state championships without a top 20 finisher in the district championships. Those teams were 4^th, 4^th and 3^rd at districts and were saved by three of the best spreads in meet history.

Because that’s the thing. There’s more than one way to get the job done. On average, state qualifying teams have had a spread of 59 seconds. But we’ve seen spreads of 1:55 (CB East in 2015) and spreads of 0:10 (CB West in 2016). That CB East team was led by district champ Jake Brophy, while that CB West team had a #1 runner at just 32^nd overall.

If you’re curious, here’s a look at the average scorers of the top 5 runners on the top 5 teams in any given year at districts:

1^st Place: 2-7-12-25-38 (83)

2^nd Place: 10-17-23-37-63 (151)

3^rd Place: 15-25-36-47-74 (197)

4^th Place: 17-30-47-62-88 (243)

5^th Place: 6-28-59-79-92 (265)

You can see there is a fairly consistent dip across each of the scoring positions, meaning superior teams on race day are typically superior across all scorers (or at least that’s how I interpret it). There’s not much shocking about that statement. Although, I do find it fun that the, while the 1^st place team averages the best front runner, the 5^th place team actually averages the second best front runner. It could just be random, sure, but that’s no fun to say.

The 5^th spot is most likely to be a “up for grabs” type spot where multiple teams of similar ability are deserving. But the teams that come out on top appear to be the ones with good front running. Maybe you need less to click on one day (you’re racing 4 on 5 against many teams), or I wonder if it’s possible that having a big time low stick is enough to spark a team and help the back part of a varsity team feel inspired to get that extra second or two needed to secure a spot. Again, this becomes interesting news for a team like Owen J Roberts, Henderson or Bishop Shanahan who are expected to have a big dog competing for the win to help their bubble chances.

Let’s move a bit from the front of the field and talk more about the back half of your varsity. On average, the 5^th man on a state qualifying team has been 71^st place. However, we’ve seen as low as 151 (Pennsbury in 2013) crack the state championship. That’s one of 4 occasions where the #5 runner has been outside the top 100. The average gap between a team’s #4 and #5 has been about 21 places. The owners of the two biggest gaps are, unsurprisingly, two teams that had a #5 runner outside that top 100. The moral of the story here being, if you don’t have a great #5, the top 4 better be ready to roll.

That gap from #4 to #5 is pretty similar no matter what place you get in the district, averages for the top 5 in order are 13-26-28-26-13. But what if we think of this place difference as a percent of your score? Then the #s become 34%-41%-37%-29%-14%. That means the back half of the state qualifying field has been keeping a tighter point spread as a percentage of their score in that 4-5 spot.

When you consider the 6^th and 7^th place teams from districts over the past five seasons, the average gap between #4 and #5 is 30 and 32 places. I think this stresses how important it is that all five of your guys click on one day. Or at least that you need to have a complete team if you are going to have the best chance of advancing.

We’ve talked a lot about the idea of depth and exactly how far it goes. I was a big proponent of having a #6 runner ready to step up and make a play for your team. From a theoretical stand point, I’ve always felt that made a good amount of sense. But what do the numbers say?

Well, on average the gap between the 5 and 6 of state qualifying teams has been about 29 points. The 6^th and 7^th placers average is a little higher (34) which represents about a 17% increase. I didn’t look up these place gaps on a second basis, but it’s safe to assume that places toward the back of the field are more closely contested compared to places closer to the front. One second in the top 10 may only change your place a spot or two. One second in the 80 range could move you up close to double digits.

Maybe at a certain point, that’s the obvious answer. Every year there is an inflection point where times start to trend more and more variable. You want to keep as many of your guys ahead of that point as possible so you aren’t subject to the randomness of a second or two moving you 20 points in the standings.

I was curious, so I checked this out. If you swapped out a team’s #5 runner for their #6, what would happen to the state qualifying teams? For 16 of the 25 teams, there place would not change at all. That includes all 5 of the district champions. For 22 out of the 25 teams, they would not move more than 2 spots in the standings, but those 3 schools that did have significant movements were the only three schools that would have dropped out of the state championship qualifying picture had they been forced to swap their #5 for their #6. In case you were wondering, it was 2013 Pennsbury, 2013 Penncrest (the two highest point totals to make the state championships in the past 5 seasons) and 2014 CR North.

One last thing that I found interesting, while 11 schools have made up the 25 state qualifying teams, 6 schools have made up the last 10 6^th or 7^th place finishers. CB East and Spring Ford have each just missed twice while Pennsbury has missed out three separate times in the past five seasons. The two other seasons? Pennsbury snuck into states in 2013 and then took 8^th place in 2015. CB East owns the best point total of any team to not make states in the past 5 seasons. They scored 239 in 2014, a point total that would have made states in any of the other 4 years.