Why no centralized database for prep stats? Ask the coaches

Capassio Cherry was likely one of the leading rushers in the entire state last season, when he totaled 2,021 yards and 25 touchdowns.

But where exactly did the Edmonds-Woodway High School star running back finish on the state rushing list? Was he the top rusher in his classification? How did he compare to the state’s top rushers of years past?

If this was college football or the NFL, those questions could be answered with a quick visit to a website like ESPN.com and a few clicks of the mouse.

But in the world of high school sports — where nearly every sport is without a centralized database for statewide stats — finding definitive answers to those questions is next to impossible.

The only high school sports with comprehensive statewide public stats/rankings databases are track and cross country, where seemingly every high school team posts all of their athletes’ times and marks on Athletic.net. Because there appears to be full participation among all teams — or at least something very close to it — one can visit the site during the season and see with reasonable certainty where an athlete ranks among his or her competitors across the state, or even nationally.

But for other high school sports like football, determining exactly where a star player’s stats rank at the state level is much more of a mystery.

“You can kind of piece together a decent look at it, but you’re never going to get it all,” said Christopher Ames, who used to run a now-idle Washington high school football website called StatewideStats.com.

The most popular source for Washington prep football stats is MaxPreps, a high school sports website that includes a page for every school and team. Yet while many teams enter their stats onto the site, it’s far from a comprehensive source.

For instance, only about one-third of the state’s 66 Class 4A football teams entered stats on MaxPreps for all of their games last season. And nearly half of the state’s 4A teams entered their stats for just two games or fewer.

“Their website is awesome,” said Washington prep football guru Ryland Spencer, who covers the sport statewide for the website Cascadia Preps. “If we could get schools on board with using it regularly, it would be great.

“The problem is the (Washington Interscholastic Activities Association) has sent out a lot of emails and stuff trying to push it to teams and trying to get teams to do it, and it just seems like nobody wants to get on board with it.”

Spencer said he thinks the lack of consistent statewide stat entry into MaxPreps stems in part from coaches simply not making it a priority.

“The thing is, a lot of these teams have to (keep stats) anyway,” he said. “It’s the whole process of uploading it into MaxPreps that stops people from doing it more often than not.”

Spencer also said he thinks some coaches don’t want to make their stats public, fearing it will give an opponent an advantage. Ames said he also ran into that problem with his website.

“Some of your old-school (coaches) really don’t like that,” Spencer said. “They don’t want to give away their stats.”

At least several newspapers across the state, including The Herald, collect and publish high school football stats throughout the season for their specific area.

There also have been websites that feature comprehensive football stats for their area teams, such as John Crawford’s current site for the Mid-Columbia and Columbia Basin Big 9 conferences. Up north, Tyler Anderson is in the process of transitioning his stats database for Whatcom County football teams onto the relatively new website Whatcom Preps.

But in terms of a centralized place for prep football stats across the state, that source doesn’t currently exist.

“You’re going to have to look in multiple places if you want to get a real good idea,” Ames said.

Over the past decade or two, some prep football enthusiasts have worked tirelessly in an attempt to fill this statewide stats void.

In the 1990s, David Maley began researching high school football on a statewide level and collaborated with Dave Tuengel, who at the time published a weekly newsletter that included some of the stat leaders from across the state.

Ames, the son of longtime Meridian High School football coach Bob Ames, was inspired by Tuengel’s work. After Ames’ brother, Patrick, compiled an exhaustive statistical history of the Meridian football program, Christopher started a website in 2004 called MeridianFootball.com that included the team’s stats dating all the way back to 1974.

At about the same time, Ames created a user-entry portion of the site where individuals — preferably team statisticians — could add stats for players across the state. This endeavor eventually led to the website StatewideStats.com, which Ames estimates reached its peak sometime between 2009 and 2011.

Even then, however, Ames said StatewideStats.com included stats for a relatively low percentage of the state’s 300-plus high school football teams. Stat contributions fizzled out over time, and the site went on hiatus after the 2017 season.

“The site he had was incredible,” Spencer said. “And it was perfect for what this state needed. It was one of those things that just never caught on, and honestly it’s sad that it didn’t.”

Ames said if there’s something out there right now that could help fill the statewide stats void, it might be Hudl, which coaches often use to share game film with their players.

“It’s about as standard as something you’re going to find from Walla Walla to Ritzville to Camas to Kamiak,” Ames said. “They all have it.”

However, Ames said there likely won’t be anything at the high school football level that mirrors the centralized stat databases available at higher levels of the sport.

“We’re never going to get to, say, an NCAA D-I football level where every (stat) you can possibly expect is available for all teams,” Ames said. “That’s never going to happen.”

“Unless MaxPreps literally put a person at every single game and had them do it,” Spencer added, “I don’t see how it could happen.”