Which team is going to win a high school state championship this weekend? There’s no consensus among the voters.
This week’s Seattle Sideline poll asked readers which Snohomish County high school team they believe has the best chance of winning a state championship this weekend, and the voting was all over the map. Here’s the results:
POLL: Which Snohomish County high school team has the best chance of winning a state title this weekend? Full context, including a poll with all eight teams, here: https://t.co/Qi8ckwZIYr
— Nick Patterson (@NickHPatterson) May 21, 2018
Because of the limitations of Twitter polls, which only allow for a maximum of four answers, I had to group five of the eight teams into an “other” category on Twitter. Consequently, if we keep those same five teams together in the blog poll, then “other” was the overwhelming first choice in the poll with 51 percent of the vote. The Jackson softball team came in second at 22 percent, followed by the Snohomish softball team at 18 percent and the Edmonds-Woodway baseball team at 9 percent.
If we break the numbers down further, the team that actually received the most total votes by a narrow margin was the Lakewood softball team, which wasn’t even one of the choices on the Twitter poll. No doubt some of those “other” votes on Twitter were aimed at Lakewood as well. So according to this poll, the team that has the best chance of winning a state title is the one that finished seventh in its league and is making its first state appearance since 2001.
For the record, the math says that if you want to be correct with your vote, you should have voted for one of the baseball teams. Only four teams remain in the baseball brackets, which means they only have to win two games to claim the state championship. There’s 16 teams remaining in the softball brackets, which mean they need to win four straight to take the title.
All of my Seattle Sidelines polls are influenced to some degree by tribalism. The polls about the Seattle Seahawks are being voted on largely by Seahawks fans, the polls on the Everett Silvertips are being voted on largely by Silvertips fans. Therefore, it’s not surprising when the results tend to skew in favor of the pro-local response.
I think this affects the prep polls more than anything else. This is especially true because I’m not one of our high school reporters, meaning readers don’t necessarily come to my blog or Twitter feed in search of high school sports content. Therefore, I believe polls like this, in which people already have a tendency to vote for their rooting interest, are further affected by whichever team’s fan base happens to discover the poll and spread the word. Kudos to the Lakewood softball team for its success in this regard.
The baseball and softball tournaments begin Friday. The 4A softball tournament is in Spokane starting at 10 a.m., the 3A softball tournament is in Lacey starting a 9 a.m., the 2A softball tournament is in Selah starting at 10 a.m., the 3A baseball tournament is in Pasco starting at 4 p.m. and the 2A baseball tournament is in Yakmia starting at 10 a.m. The tournaments conclude Saturday. Progress in those tournaments can be followed on the WIAA website.
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