I noticed this mark a while back. It's pretty obvious when you look at the other marks and what the competitors "typically" jump that this is a mismeasure.
My guess is they used laser measurements and made an error in what is called the "offset" distance. It's actually an easy mistake to make. I work with a power 5 school on their home meets and over the years it has happened twice. Both times it was caught during the competition and the incorrect marks were adjusted to be correct once the difference in the offset was calculated.
several coaches in attendance at this meet said that they were measuring from the back of the board (you are supposed to measure from the front). So all marks are ~6-9" further. It is good jump, but not a 6.52...
There is a local college that hosts a lot of meets near my town. The sand in the long jump pit is always about 6 inches below the runway. People always jump a few inches farther there than anywhere else in the state.
There is a local college that hosts a lot of meets near my town. The sand in the long jump pit is always about 6 inches below the runway. People always jump a few inches farther there than anywhere else in the state.
I know a guy (HS) that jumped 25'0 in a sloped pit, back when 25'0 was crazy crazy. Next furthest he jumped from that season was a 24'05. He was good - but not THAT good.
Well, she was proud to pose for a photo at the performance board with 6.52 on it so it seems like either she is unaware of the bogus mark or proud of it.
Mid major or not, it is pretty undeniable someone consistently messed up somewhere in the measuring/recording process at that meet.
Most of the athletes compete at YSU a lot, so facilities is not the reason for the big PB's.
Measuring mistakes and procedural errors are not uncommon at mid major and smaller meets.
Frustrating, because the staff/athlete probably know it is a bogus mark, but it is in TFRRS, and they are going with it.
As I said, I'm running an analysis on results now. I'm going to do my best to determine if these results are statistically anomalous, and if so, to isolate the anomaly and determine if it is limited to this specific event (LJ at this specific YSU meet) or if it is consistent across all meets occurring at YSU
If that was a big mark she would know it. You can feel it in your body when you've had a huge jump. Especially for that margin of a PR. So she would know for sure if it was legit.
Since someone posted the video of the actual jump if someone here is dedicated enough they could probably calculate velocity and airtime to get a good estimate of what the jump distance should be. Or if someone was in the area and could access the track they could get a close mark of where she would've landed to measure.
also, if you had someone mis-measuring marks off the wrong spot, you'd think it would be a consistent error. everyone gets a foot extra. the y state "bump" instead varies from 1/6m (what's that, 6 inches?) to 1/2m (foot and a half). so it's not some goofy official making a consistent mistake.
Uh, your approach assumes everyone had exactly the same type of day (relative to their existing PRs). That's very unlikely. More likely: it was a consistent error by the official (everyone gets a foot) but that some athletes were close to their PRs and others were not. That would create a range of "bumps" like what was seen.
Former d3 jumper here and thought I'd add my 2 cents!
smaller schools (the ones fortunate enough to own an indoor track) have all sorts of shenanigans going on around their jumping pit. First off the sand is always under the track level, this is because it is very hard to clean the sands jumping out the pit unless they own one of those commercial vaccums. Then, they dont get the sand as wet because it drains nowhere, meaning that the sand mark will break backwards, so it has happened that the markers (and those are usually not officials, they are teammates lol) are told to guesstimate a few inches up the closest mark to the board lol. And lastly, the officials (or if they couldnt find one, some coach) are put on the board to check the takeoffs and mind you, using a "jump"/"scratch" system, a coach with no idea about jumps will consider a "scratch" if the shoe/spike actually scratches the yellow. Which would literally mean up to 2-3 inches depending on the spike plate. And dont get me started on some tracks using measuring tapes so old that the hook is already gone, and the zero starts at 4in lmao.
So there you go, the perfect combination of all that is your 8-10in PR lol. This took me back 20 years and surely made me chuckle on this uneventful Friday morning. Shout out to all my horizontals out there! those were for sure fun times.
Looking over the Indoor Qualifying Lists, something caught my eye. A female long jumper from Duquesne, Rose Kuchera. When I clicked on her Tffrs profile and look at her results, I noticed something odd. She has only jumped over 20 feet one time, her NCAA qualifying jump of 6.52 meters (21 feet 4.75 inches), at 2026 YSU Mid Major Invitational from the Pentathlon Long Jump. Her 2nd best Jump Ever is 6.08m 19' 11.5", ironically also at a meet hosted by Youngstown State. I looked at other performances in the Pentathlon Long Jump from that meet and noticed a trend. MAJOR Personal Bests, listed below.
2nd Place: Isabella Mastria - Frostburg State 5.95m 19' 6.25" (Second Best Jump Ever 5.78m - 18' 11.75") 3rd Place: Isabella Costa - Duquesne 5.90m 19' 4.25" (Second Best Jump Ever 5.46m 17' 11") 4th Place: Eva Leatherman - Duquesne 5.89m 19' 4" (Second Best Jump Ever 5.35m 17' 6.75") 5th Place: Autumn Wyatt Slippery Rock 5.78m 18' 11.75" (Second Best Jump Ever 5.62m 18' 5.25") 6th Place: Mylee Harmon - Youngstown St. 5.77m 18' 11.25" (Second Best Jump Ever 5.36m 17' 7") 7th Place: Riley Robitaille - Windsor 5.73m 18' 9.75" (Second Best Jump Ever 5.61m 18' 5" ***At the Same meet the previous year*** Not including that meet best jump is 5.39m 17' 8.25")
What is going on at Youngstown State meets? I mean the data is undeniable.
Reminds me of the short road race courses in a certain Canadian city...
There is just no way that everyone had those big PR's and then they don't come near them the rest of the season without something being off. No fault to the athletes, I actually feel a little sorry for them. Imagine thinking that you are way better than you actually are... you are going to be chasing these performances and never coming close. Every jump after is a huge let down. This girl is going to get to Nationals and get absolutely demolished. It’s not good for anyone that this happened.
Former d3 jumper here and thought I'd add my 2 cents!
smaller schools (the ones fortunate enough to own an indoor track) have all sorts of shenanigans going on around their jumping pit. First off the sand is always under the track level, this is because it is very hard to clean the sands jumping out the pit unless they own one of those commercial vaccums. Then, they dont get the sand as wet because it drains nowhere, meaning that the sand mark will break backwards, so it has happened that the markers (and those are usually not officials, they are teammates lol) are told to guesstimate a few inches up the closest mark to the board lol. And lastly, the officials (or if they couldnt find one, some coach) are put on the board to check the takeoffs and mind you, using a "jump"/"scratch" system, a coach with no idea about jumps will consider a "scratch" if the shoe/spike actually scratches the yellow. Which would literally mean up to 2-3 inches depending on the spike plate. And dont get me started on some tracks using measuring tapes so old that the hook is already gone, and the zero starts at 4in lmao.
So there you go, the perfect combination of all that is your 8-10in PR lol. This took me back 20 years and surely made me chuckle on this uneventful Friday morning. Shout out to all my horizontals out there! those were for sure fun times.
This reminds me of indoor meets held at Alaska Airlines Arena in the 70s-late 90s at Hec Edmundson Pavilion on the University of Washington campus before the Dempsey facility was built. The long/triple jump pit was at least 4 inches below the level of the floor surface because of the pit's covering.
I'm guessing part of it had to do with the fact that the sand pit was right next to the entrance to the basketball team's locker room, so the facilities people at the UW rarely bothered to level the sand pit between meets, with the rationale being that filling the pit with sand would make it harder to close the pit.
Fraud at NCAA Indoors? Was this long jump qualifying mark legit? College Running D1 Duquesne U. Jumper who was decent in WPIAL and PIAA HS
I quit working meets at YSU for a number of reasons including using HS Officials at College meets. They brought me in for the LJ and TJ particularly for TJ as they do not TJ in HS in Ohio. It is my experience that is possible that Athletes who practice and compete on poor jumping facilities can hit marks that are significantly better when they are on good facilities. This was particular true of Pgh. Public School City League jumpers when they were able to win or finish in the top 3 or podium when jumping at Beaver Stadium at Penn State for the PIAA ST HS Meet then or now at their Indoor facility for the PTFCA HS PA State. Indoor Championships. This could also be true at Shippensburg.
Funny I know this girl and my kids go to ysu open meets to compete. Opposite thing happened with my daughter whose jump was measured short. Anyways, Rose is a good athlete but haven't seen her jump more than 20 ft yet.
Mid major or not, it is pretty undeniable someone consistently messed up somewhere in the measuring/recording process at that meet.
Most of the athletes compete at YSU a lot, so facilities is not the reason for the big PB's.
Measuring mistakes and procedural errors are not uncommon at mid major and smaller meets.
Frustrating, because the staff/athlete probably know it is a bogus mark, but it is in TFRRS, and they are going with it.
As I said, I'm running an analysis on results now. I'm going to do my best to determine if these results are statistically anomalous, and if so, to isolate the anomaly and determine if it is limited to this specific event (LJ at this specific YSU meet) or if it is consistent across all meets occurring at YSU
Okay, here's my analysis. Sorry for the delay.
The hypothesis is that results from the LJ at the YSU Mid Major meet are statistically anomalous. But if this hypothesis is true, it doesn't tell us why they are anomalous. So I decided I also had to look at all the other YSU meets, and I decided to throw in TJ results in case the anomaly could be attributed to a badly marked runway or something similar. By widening the study focus, its easier to isolate the actual effect.
I started by compiling all 2026 indoor marks from any athlete that competed in the LJ or TJ at a YSU meet. This ended up being a cohort of 168 athletes (123 LJ, 77 TJ, 32 in both) with over 1000 athlete-meet combinations (instances of an individual athlete competing in an individual event at an individual meet), with each combination comprising up to 6 marks. For each athlete-meet combo, I picked out their best mark, their worst mark, and the median mark for analysis. Lots of numbers to work with.
To be in the study cohort, the athlete also had to have at least 3 non-YSU meets this year. I used the non-YSU meet marks to establish a reliable performance baseline for each athlete to which I could compare the YSU results.
The first round of analysis helped me determine if there was any statistical anomaly across all YSU meets for each event. At this level there was no significant finding.
The second round of analysis looked at each YSU meet in isolation to determine how much the results deviated from the established baselines. There was only one meet-event that was statistically anomalous - but it wasn't at the Mid Major Invite, it was the women's LJ at the Horizon League championships. The mean z-score for marks from this event was 1.421, meaning that, on average, athletes' marks were 1.421 standard deviations above their performance baseline. The p-value here was 0.007, very statistically significant.
On its own, this really doesn't tell us much though. Being a conference championship, the data is subject to selection effect since you'd only have the best athletes competing at their best for this meet.
If I wanted to take this a step further, I could look at results from individual flights, but that would require me to go back to square one and change how I collected the data which would be a bit of a pain.
But the bottom line is that there is no statistical anomaly in the LJ results at YSU meets at a whole, or at the Mid Major invite - only in the women's LJ at the Horizon League champs.
This post was edited 2 minutes after it was posted.
