Official Idaho Track Thread

You’re just pointing out the oddity that the 5A Boise area schools are stronger in boys track this year than the rest of the state. They base qualifiers off counting 5a schools in each region, which normally works. It could be the case in the future that all the north Idaho track teams are the strongest, or SE Idaho. The unfairness this year isn’t from population, it’s just that the good teams are mostly in the same district meet this year.

If I’m not mistaken, the other common system that could be used is going straight off times and marks and ignoring placements at district. The unfairness that would creep in with that in Idaho is the wild differences in weather. Altitude could be adjusted for, but not weather differences.

One other idea could be creating a 6A division for the really big Boise schools, but I assume there really aren’t enough big schools for that.

Qualifying 24 in 5A with either 6 or 8 at large spots would be an easy solution. Prelims move to winner of each heat plus next 5 fastest times, and 800 prelims could be 2 heats of 12 with top 3 of each heat plus next 6 fastest times. Treat the large classification like a large classification in other states.

There is a proposal to create a 6A division. Only Lewiston and Middleton would move down under this proposal. 6A would be 1400 students and above, 5A is 700 to 1399, 4A is 350-699, 3A is 175-349, 2A is 90-174 and 1A is 89 and below. Current 5A cutoff is 1280 and above. Any and all proposals want to keep teams from north Idaho and east Idaho in the large classification. What really needs to happen is that a new high school is opened, likely to the south to alleviate pressure on Mountain View. Students can shift from Meridian and Mountain View to that new school, and students can shift from Rocky to Meridian and Owyhee and Eagle to Owyhee. West Ada should be trying to get all of those schools close to 1600 students. Centennial and Meridian are currently 200 students over that, Eagle is 400, Mountain View is 600 and Rocky is 800. Going to 7 schools would bring each school to just under 1,700 if equally balanced. There are a ton of kids at Rocky and Eagle that should be at Owyhee, and I'm sure there are plenty at Mountain View that should be at Meridian.

Going to 24 qualifiers fixes all of the issues with unbalanced divisions, though. Plenty of at large spots, distance fields can easily accommodate that many kids, and there are lots of states that have prelims in the 800 with much smaller classifications.

Rocky is at around 1950 enrollment. They aren’t the 2400 powerhouse they used to be in the pre-Owyhee era.

Nerd alert, but I took a deep dive on the data, and its actually looking to be closer than you suspect.

I made a score table based off of the top returning times in each of the following events: 800m, 1600m, 3200m, and 5k. The top time in each event so far this year (in Idaho) was used as a baseline, worth 1 pt. So a 1:53 for the 800m would be worth 1 pt. I then scaled back the times, so a 2:00 is worth 8 pts, which holds the same value as a 4:24, or 9:26 or 15:20.

Obviously, this isn't a perfect scaling system, but it's all relatively close.

After averaging the top 3 scores for each athlete (to help avoid outliers in the data) I ranked each team off of the top 5. The lower the score the better. Here is what came out:

CDA - 49 flat

Rocky - 50.22

Boise - 50.38

Yes I did include CDA's incoming stud Freshman.

The 1.22 pt gap between CDA and Rocky is equivalent to an estimated avg team time difference of ~7 seconds over a 5k.

Now, there are a couple things that might of slightly changed the data.

For one, I took lifetime PR's, which worked great for Rocky since all of their PR's came from this last season, but Jacob King from CDA and several of Boise's guys have run their PR's in certain events in past seasons.

That means that Rocky right now is likely around full strength currently. CDA is more or less at full strength right now, but Boise in the simulation is stronger than the current Boise team as it stands.

Either way, the data shows that Rocky and CDA and Boise are all going to be in the same ballpark as each other. Of course, 7 seconds make a big difference in team average in XC, but the whole point of this experiment was to see if there is in fact a major difference in the ability of the top Idaho teams, which there doesn't seem to be.

Did the 5a 3200 in Boise really have 3 dqs? What happened?

Heemeyer and Sainsbury held hands crossing the line. Not sure about Ihmels.

You are rating a 2:00 as equal to a 4:24, 9:26 and 15:20? Are you high?

Look at drop down lists in Idaho right now. How many kids have run 2:00 vs 4:24 vs. 9:26? The fact that you treat these as equal just shows that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

Completely ditch the 800. It is irrelevant becuase it can be a different talent set and anyone good at XC will have relevant 1600 or XC performances you can use.

scrub tullyrunners for speed ratings on Idaho runners. Bob firman, I land empire, NXR, state. Weigh that as heavily as your 3200, which both need to be weighted more heavily than the 1600.

After you do your rankings, you can give a gut feel to move up fast 800 and 1600 guys who you know something about and seem underranked.

When I run a hypothetical meet with the top 9 or so idaho teams only, weighing last years speed ratings heavily, it goes:

CDA and Boise - mid 70s.

Rocky and IF - mid 90s. I expect Rocky to move way up given the very large squad of runners who could improve. IF seems this year to have much more of XC talent than track talent and several top 5 guys weren’t in track for various reasons.

BK and Centennial - mid 110s.

BK is a wild card for me because their team seems heavily weighted towards 800 and 1600 talent, not true XC guys. They could move up and win 4A if that changes.

Maybe we will see both Rietze and Carr and maybe Rohlinger close the gap on CDA’s 4th so that they have people to back the scorers up in case someone has an off day.
That would be helpful.

Post the top 9. How do you account for freshmen like Donahue, Hymas, and Taggart that are now essentially equal over 3200 to Tuft, but with slower cross times? I think that you almost have to weight track heavier for freshmen because so much is changing so quickly.

The battle for state track has started!

3200's are over, here's the top takeaways.

In 5A, Heemeyer and Sainsbury go 1-2, with Riegert from Eagle in 3rd, all running in the 9:10's. Something to note that could play into next XC season is that Cody Lucas of Rocky breaks up the Boise duo of Kemper and Helder, as well as beating CDA's number 1, who also breaks up Boise's duo.

For the girls, Ana peters leads 4 girls under 11, winning in 10:42! It's important to note that there are another two girls who ran 11 flat, and of those 6 girls, 4 are returning next year, ensuring that the girls side is going to be really competitive.

For 4A, Nelah Roberts (11th grader) wins convincingly in 10:55. For the Boys, Stockton Stevens gets the W in 9:17, with Sam Fish and Matt Thomas close behind in 9:19 and 9:20 respectively. All three of whom are seniors.

Cody Lucas already broke up Helder and Kemper in cross this last year. Helder finished in 5th, Lucas in 7th, and Kemper in 10th. Max Cervi-Skinner went with Sainsbury and Ringert and fell off towards the end but took a gamble and it didn't pay off. The guys that beat him sat back and picked him off when he fell apart. Side note: What's the deal with Ringert? 9th at State cross but pretty convincingly 3rd here. Plus he has beat Cody Lucas by 12 and 16 seconds in back to back weeks and Cervi-Skinner by 18 seconds.

Right now there are 7 guys coming back with sub 9:30 personal bests. Heemeyer, Athay, Lucas, Ringert, Cervi-Skinner, Kemper, and Corbin Johnston out of Freemont. 5 of those guys have sub 9:15 PRs, and Kemper looks like he good go that fast. Could all 5 go sub 9 next year?

Ringert had some issues during cross that he has figured out, he was bonking the last 400m in XC races and losing 10-20 seconds at the end of districts and state XC, great seeing him back to his normal self.

As for sub 9 next year….

Heemeyer has broke 9 so yes on him

yes for Ringert, Cervi, and Lucas

Athay hopefully!

Kemper no, once you go mid distance you never come back

Johnston yes if he gets to a big invite

Ringert was in the cafeteria yesterday afternoon. He was packed in ice and taking his temp every 10 minutes. He looked pretty flat earlier compared to the districts meet. Was he sick? I thought he would have put up more of a fight the last two laps of the 3200.

I overheard someone saying that he had said on the line of the 3200 that he didn't feel great, and shortly after the race he broke a fever of over 100 degrees.

Take that as you will

That makes a lot more sense. Good run for having a fever then.

Every 3200 runner looked like they had a fever after about 4 laps...it was already getting a little warm by 10am yesterday. Unfortunately, there was no scenario in which Ringert was going to beat Sainsbury or Heemeyer, and that's ok...all 3 of them are legit runners and hopefully great young men.

I mean, if a guy is packed in ice later in the day and getting his temp taken every few minutes, he probably legit has a fever and not from running a 3200 in the heat. It’s hard to say what someone would or wouldn’t have done if they are sick on the starting line.