Track & Field v.s. Wrestling School Performance

[Jhall300]

Was talking to some of my wrestlers who are currently doing T&F about some of the schools they see during meets, and thought this would be an interesting topic to bring up. In the chart below, I have listed the amount of top 5 ranked athletes per event per school in T&F, according to athletic.net. If an athlete is ranked in multiple events, they get multiple entries to their teams total. Relay teams and field events are included as well.

 

To whack the proverbial dead horse, why do we not see more of the bigger 4A schools having more athletes presented? Especially in a sport where you can have multiple entrants from the same school compete in the state series, shouldn't the population density of these bigger schools be represented more in the rankings, at least you would think? Instead, we see the ranking populated by a surprising amount of smaller schools.

Edited April 10 by Jhall300

[maligned]

Wrestling schools in 3A/4A out of total wrestling schools: 33% (102 of 311)

State placers from those 3A/4A schools: 70% (79 of 112)

 

Athletes representing those same 3A/4A schools in the T & F list above: 81% (65 of 80)

 

We see in wrestling too, that there can be a lot of small schools represented in a list of "at least one state qualifier" or "at least one placer" because there are so many of them. But you can see in the list that no 1A/2A school has more than 2 kids, and there are only 15 small-school kids (19%) coming from 67% of the total schools.

[R. Kendrick]

There is also 1 less level in the state series in Track and Field.   No Semi State

Edited April 10 by R. Kendrick

[Patrick Mangan]

I had a couple wrestlers do pretty good this year who are really excelling in track right now according to the coach. 

[MattM]

36 minutes ago, R. Kendrick said:

There is also 1 less level in the state series in Track and Field.   No Semi State

Yes, but time, distance, and judge score based sports can do that more easily with a set cut number.  It's not a one on one bracket.

[AndyStJ]

Since my specialty is sort of changing the subject, how many of those top 5 ranked T&F athletes are also wrestlers? Is there anyone who is ranked in both wrestling and T&F? I would think some throwers if no one else.

 

An overall, who is the best wrestler-track-field athlete?

[R. Kendrick]

On 4/10/2024 at 1:45 PM, MattM said:

Yes, but time, distance, and judge score based sports can do that more easily with a set cut number.  It's not a one on one bracket.

And there is also not a set number of state qualifiers.  If you are 5th in your regional but run/jump or throw "state standard" you advance to state also.   One athlete can also compete in 4 events, not just 1 weight class.