#StatsBonanza Guest Column: Putting Green Hope's Streak in Historical Perspective

NC It Factor
Jeff George

Green Hope's 2011 team reigns supreme among all the state meet teams in NC history, but that's not the complete story of the Falcon dynasty.

 

Earlier this week, T. C. Roberson coach Dave Culp sent me some stats that were way too good to pass up.  The short explanation is that he created a ranking of the best girls' state meet teams throughout North Carolina's cross country history.  Along the way, he pulled out some numbers that are incredibly interesting, and I want to break them down in stages.  Of course, if you're impatient (I'm not judging) and want to skip to the big conclusion, you have that opportunity below.  Credit should also go to George Phillips, Brett Honeycutt, and the many others that have helped assemble the historical records of our sport on NCPrepTrack.com, without which this type of analysis would be somewhere between "incredibly difficult" and "utterly impossible."

 

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Preliminary Numbers

Historical Progression of Girls' Teams Averaging Sub-20 at the State Meet

Schools with the Most Sub-20 Girls Team Averages at State Meets

Methodology for Ranking State Meet Teams

Top 30 Girls' State Meet Teams in NC History

 

Preliminary Numbers

First, for the purposes of this article we are comparing the results from state meets over the years, which means that schools can appear more than once in the rankings (like, Green Hope's 2014 team vs. Green Hope's 2013 team).  To be consistent, we will define "team" as the single group of girls that competed in a single state championship, and the term "school" will apply to the program as a whole, considering all the years they compete in the state meet.  Here are some interesting figures that Coach Culp determined while crunching the basic numbers for his analysis:

  • There have been some 2,370 individual teams that competed in the NCHSAA and NCISAA girls' state championships since both were first instituted (the NCHSAA started girls' competition in 1980, and the NCISAA in 1984)

  • 105 separate girls squads from 35 schools have posted an average team time (counting five runners) of less than 20 minutes - that is only 4.4% of all the girls' teams that ever competed at a state meet.

  • Green Hope has produced 7 of those 105 sub-20 teams.

  • 35 of the 105 single-year teams averaged under 19:30 - 1.3% of all the teams that competed in the all the state meets.

  • Green Hope has produced 6 of those 35 sub-19:30 teams.

  • Only 12 girls' teams have ever posted a 5-girl average under 19:00 - that is a measly 0.5% of all the state meet teams in NC history.

  • Green Hope has produced 5 of those 12 sub-19 teams.

  • Green Hope's average of 18:29.8 in the 2011 state meet is the single best average of any NC girls team ever at any NC state meet.

  • Despite the inclement weather at the 2014 state meet, which seemed to affect most runners by at least 30 seconds, Green Hope still averaged 18:46.9!

 

 

Historical Progression of Girls' Teams Averaging Sub-20 at the State Meet

Year

# Sub-20 Teams
1984 1
1997 1
1998 2
1999 3
2000 2
2001 5
2002 1
2003 3
2004 1
2005 0
2006 3
2007 2
2008 6
2009 3
2010 13
2011 13
2012 19
2013 19
2014 8

 

Breaking that down:

  • The first 29 years of girls' cross country in North Carolina produced 30 girls' teams that averaged under 20 minutes, which is 29% of the total 105.

  • The last 6 years (2008 -2014) have seen 75 of the 105 sub-20 state meet squads, or 71% of all the sub-20 teams in state history.

  • Many of the teams that Green Hope has beaten during their championship streak would have easily won state championships in the years prior to 2009.

  • Green Hope has earned all 6 of their team championships during BY FAR the strongest 6-year stretch of girls' team competition in state history.

 

It's worth noting at this point that the NCHSAA state meet shifted to Ivey Redmon Sports Complex in 2010, and it is clear that the course there is faster than its predecessor at Tanglewood.  This does skew the number of sub-20 teams over the last 6 years, and the Green Hope championship streak does largely correspond to the "Beeson Park" era.  On the other hand, the Falcons averaged 19:04 at Tanglewood in 2009 for their first championship, and the change from Tanglewood to Ivey Redmon doesn't fully account for the increase in the number of sub-20 team averages over the last 6 years.  Also on the other hand: the NCHSAA state meet used to be run at McAlpine!  In Coach Culp's words: "Things have changed.  Maybe "Beeson Park" is a little faster than Tanglewood but, still, the performance of teams has improved."

 

 

Schools with the Most Sub-20 Girls Team Averages at State Meets

  • T. C. Roberson 9

  • Cardinal Gibbons 8

  • Green Hope 7

  • Watauga 6

  • Myers Park 6

  • Chapel Hill 6

  • Mount Tabor 5

  • Providence 4

  • Reagan 4

  • Leesville Road 4

 

Methodology for Ranking State Meet Teams

For the final piece of this statistical masterpiece, Coach Culp did by hand what I wouldn't even consider doing through the MileSplit database because it would take too much work.  Here are the steps that went into the ranking of the state meet teams:

  • Having determined the 105 teams that averaged sub-20 at a state meet, he researched the individual times of all of their top 7 runners.

  • Those individual times went into a spreadsheet, labeled with school and year (so the "team name" would be "Green Hope 2014" for example.

  • He then scored that spreadsheet as a single giant "fantasy meet" (similar to our virtual meets, but MUCH bigger and broader in scope).

 

Here is a snapshot of that magnificent spreadsheet:

 

 

Top 30 Girls' State Meet Teams in NC History

1.  Green Hope 2011  (295)

2.  Green Hope 2010  (343)

3.  Green Hope 2013  (424)

4.  Green Hope 2012  (479)

5.  T. C. Roberson 2013  (491)

6.  Cardinal Gibbons 2013  (497)

7.  Green Hope 2014  (500) - Bad Weather!

8.  Myers Park 2013  (521)

9.  Cardinal Gibbons 2012  (535)

10. Providence 2012  (642)

11. Providence 2013  (665)

12. Green Hope 2009  (687)

13. T. C. Roberson 2009  (780)

14. Carrboro 2012  (793)

15. Broughton 2012  (815)

16. Ardrey Kell 2011  (841)

17. Ardrey Kell 2012  (900)

18. Marvin Ridge 2013  (918)

19. Watauga 2010  (966)

20. Broughton 2013  (983)

21. Myers Park 2014  (1007) - Bad Weather!

22. Mount Tabor 2013  (1033)

23. T. C. Roberson 2012  (1062)

24. Mount Tabor 2001  (1066)  -  McAlpine

25. Myers Park 2012  (1088)

26. East Chapel Hill 2010  (1089)

27. Cardinal Gibbons 2014  (1097) - Bad Weather!

28. Broughton 2011  (1103)

29. Charlotte Latin 2008  (1160)  -  WakeMed

20. Grimsley 2012  (1181)

 

Would Green Hope have the top 5 teams in state meet history if it weren't for the weather at this year's event?  It seems likely, and in fact this year's Falcons might have been their best group ever (at least so far!).