Event by Event Previews:
AAA 3200mAA 3200m
It’s States week in Pennsylvania and, naturally, that means I’m going to write State Meet Previews. Yes, I’ve only been half paying attention for the last three years, but that won’t stop me from pretending like I know what I’m talking about.
Bravado aside, this year’s state championships are very different than past years. After over a decade’s worth of state predictions, where I carefully developed a formula that led to average results, the 2021 state championship will turn Shippensburg’s typical structure on its head. In a typical year, there would be trials and finals for all events (besides the 32), meaning that the state champion would be determined strictly by head-to-head result. That’s not the case this time around as there will be multi-heat finals and the fastest time gets the gold medal.
This may sound like semantics, but it’s actually a huge change. Just think about the hot weather this past weekend and how that drove some more tactical results in the distance events. The District 3 and District 1 championships in the 800 went out in around 59 seconds and then the boys negative split it. Now, most of the top finishers from the fast heat at those meets still finished at the top of the standings, but at States, those “slow” heats are going to be even more talented and the incentive to just go for it and set a fast pace are arguably much higher. We’re almost guaranteed to see slow heat medalists and we may even see an upset from the slow heat depending on how tactical people are prepared to get (although if Eric Albright can close in 54 off a 59 first lap, it may not matter).
The new schedule also put a lot more emphasis on the district meet results. If you are a team like State College, you could have qualified for states in the 4x8 with only an 8:20 (and in past years, that’s probably closer to what they would have run), but this year they had to run all out to make sure they got a fast enough seed time (didn’t prove to be much of an obstacle for them as they are very good, but still). So maybe the extra hard effort sits in their legs a little more? I actually think this point won’t be that big of a deal, but it’s just another variable to put into the model *pushes glasses up on nose*.
The other big wildcard here is doubling. Back when you had to run trials and finals, coaches and athletes had to be a little more selective about which events to participate in. Some big names in the 32, would scratch the 1600 so that they wouldn’t put the extra prelim race in their legs. But this year, if you’re someone like Devon Comber, you’d think you might as well try the 1600 even if the 3200 is your focus. Maybe Gary Martin will go for the 32-16-8 triple. This year, it’s only 3 races instead of 5. So not only is doubling more like to be attempted, it may also be easier to do.
And lastly, for a data guy like myself, we are working without a prior year state meet. Last time we had outdoor states was 2019 and a lot has changed since that time. We didn’t have an indoor state championship in 2021. Even XC states this past fall was sort of weird because guys like Brady Bigger and CJ Singleton didn’t actually race head-to-head. The fact that these other state meets didn’t happen or happened differently doesn’t really impact the athletes, they know what they are doing at this point, so this is really just a paragraph about me trying to make it seem like my life is very hard and that when my predictions are inevitably very wrong it’s just because of the lack of data *adjusts pocket protector on shirt*.
Despite all of these terrible, crippling obstacles, I will be bravely forging ahead and making state predictions. As soon as the performance list comes out, I’ll start work on the 3200 predictions, but I’d like to see where they officially break up the heats for the 4x8, 16 and 8 before releasing those predictions because technically I think the heat breakout could have an impact on things as noted above.
In the meantime, enjoy the week, stay healthy and, as always,
stay classy.
No comments:
Post a Comment