The ranking of high school teams and athletes can be a game in itself, and it’s one in which those who do the rankings are often held unaccountable.
If a top-ranked team is beaten, it’s an upset, for which the person or panel that did the ranking has set up the “favorite” to be upset.
Most preseason predictions are expressions of hope or favoritism based on past performance, returning lettermen, strength of schedule, and even a team’s appearance in uniform.
The latter just might be the best criteria.
As a season progresses, prediction accuracy tends to improve in direct correlation with the league standings. Teams near the top of the league can generally be predicted to defeat those below them.
You would think sports media experts whose jobs include knowledge and insight of the teams they cover would have accuracy averages well above coin flipping. Last year, though, a brave sportswriter went head-to-head with a two-headed coin in predicting scores for an entire football season. The heads-you-win and tails-you-lose coin came up with a .630 percent accuracy average. The sportswriter? Just .575!
No, I do not know who flipped the coin. Yes, that may be one of those unknown factors.
The courage of those willing to expose the quality of their expertise by predicting high school contests must be admired. Some expose their confidence by selecting only games they wish to predict. Others use popular predictions to conserve their reputations with the friends and fans of favorite teams.
Inconsistency is but one of the exciting and unpredictable characteristics of youth sports. Undefeated teams or an athlete’s best-in-the-state feats in actual competition are the easiest criteria for foreseeing the future. Being undefeated is only consistent until the next game.
Even in cross country and track and field, where rankings are based solely on performance, too many factors are left out of the formula. And it is those factors that are most important to the student-athletes’ gain from sports.
Learning curves that include building up determination, preparation for peak performance, acceleration of improvement, and “I can” attitudes are known, and kept secret. Only the coach and athlete know for sure.
Great coaches inspire kids to experience performance peaks in individual sports, and to achieve teamwork perfection in team sports. Good coaches will either ignore or capitalize on incomplete and inaccurate rankings.
Rankings can be an asset or a liability. They can be as damaging as they are helpful.
And how do you factor into predictions what records and scores fail to show? How about a recent victory by the Lynnwood High School volleyball team? The scores in the five-game match were 9-15, 8-15, 15-13, 15-8, 15-9. During that pivotal third game, at the moment of defeat, a turning point occurred because of all those intangible qualities that kids can suddenly find in themselves.
Accomplishments in school sports are earned not an automatic fulfillment of our hopes and desires. Being ranked No. 1 is reserved for only one team, whereas sports provide opportunities for all of us to be all we can be.
No. 1s can be found anywhere and everywhere we look in education sports.
Guaranteed.
Cliff Gillies, former executive director of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, writes weekly during the school year for The Herald. His mailing address is 7500 U.S. Highway 101, South Bend, WA 98586. His e-mail address is cliffsal@techline.com.
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