State Stats

I did a little analysis while I was in Philosophy class yesterday and decided to look over the trends in the outdoor track and field state championship. The quick thing to notice was that District One dominates at the outdoor track and field meet in terms of state champions which is fairly logical seeing it is the biggest district as well. In AAA, no one outside of District 1, 3, 7 and now 12 has won a distance state title outdoors of the 4 events (4x8, 32, 16, 8). Tom Coyle is the lone District 12 gold medalist of that bunch. District 7 has only gotten titles from Wil Baily and Ethan Martin and those came in the last two years. 

In the past 7 years the 800m state champion has not been a state medalist in XC the previous fall. Meanwhile only 4 out of the 14 state champs at the mile and 3200 were not state medalists with two of those men, Burkhardt and Palmisano, having medaled as Juniors and having unfortunate luck as Seniors. 

Out of the state champions in the 4 distance events, just 2 of out the 28 were not top 2 finishers at their District Championship meet the previous weekend (Will Kellar and Zach Brehm). 21 out of the 28 state champs also won a district championship the previous weekend. Cumberland Valley is the only 4x8 squad out of the 7 year window to lose at districts and win at states (and both of those races were by a nose). 

When you take all these factors into consideration, the numbers show the best way to predict who will win the state championship in each distance event is just to pick the District One Champion. A whopping 16/28 (57%) AAA state champions were also AAA District One Champions. In 2009 and 2011, each of the 4 state champions was also the District One champ. 

Just some food for thought as we look ahead. 

I will say this, in the last two years, out of the 8 distance state champs there have been 3 from District 1, 2 from District 7, 2 from District 3 and 1 from District 12. That's a split of 37.5%-25%-25%-12.5%. The previous 5 years had 17 from District One, 0 from District 7, 3 from District 3 and 0 from District 12 giving a spread of 85%-15%-0%-0%.