A college coaching buddy had this report that the author had asked him to review before publication. It doesn't specifically deal with the topic being discussed, but it does discuss the difficulty in indoor track adjustments. I found it interesting.
August 14, 2009
Enclosed is the final report and recommendations relative to indoor track & field. While lengthy, I have attempted to provide a complete analysis for the committee, given this type of project has not been undertaken before, therefore it will establish a baseline. As discussed this summer there is strong interest in addressing the inequity in qualifying standards to the Indoor Track & Field Championships on a flat, 200 meter track. Given the USTFCCCA leadership also requested to “provide relief” for the flat 200 meter standard this report will address those concerns. This report is broken down into the following segments:
• Statement of the issue
• Historical Significance of Issue
• Methodology utilized in analysis
• Limitation of the study
• Structural differences in track size
• Facility review
• 2009 analysis of qualifying performances
• Division II and Division III statement
• Recommendations on new standards
• Summary and further study
THE ISSUE
The qualifying process for NCAA Division I indoor track & field faces many obstacles, mostly in structural variances. We find indoor track & field facilities ranging in size from 145 meters all the way to 320 meters, which has caused difficulty in setting fair and equitable qualifying standards for the NCAA championship. The NCAA Division I Track & Field Committee as moderators of Division I track & field is entrusted with the goal of making collegiate track & field fair for all student-athletes.
HISTORY
Historically, NCAA indoor qualifying standards were developed to produce a certain number of athletes that would be in a pool for possible selection. Each year the standards were adjusted based on the total number of “automatic” qualifiers from the previous year(s). If too many athletes attained the automatic qualifying standard, the standard was adjusted to be more challenging, while if too few athletes attained the automatic standard, the standard was relaxed. The provisional qualifying standard was simply developed to ensure a deep enough pool of athletes in each event, so the committee could fill the field after declarations and scratches. At no point in the process was track size a consideration. Previous members of the NCAA Division I Track & Field committee made decisions under a very different set of dynamics than currently exist. Twenty years ago the standard indoor facility was a flat, 200 meter track. Within the last 10-12 years permanently or hydraulically banked 200 meter tracks, or huge 300 meter oversized facilities have been built. Because of this proliferation of “new” type tracks it has become problematic for the NCAA Division I committee to ensure fair access to collegiate student-athletes. While the Division I Standards sub-committee has attempted each summer to make adjustments to the qualifying standards based on how many athletes hit the auto-qualifier, or provisional qualifier, track size must now become a consideration. History would tell us that qualifying standards have been established in an isolated manner, without an overarching philosophy. Any time we do research, we look for patterns of consistency, which will guide us through the process. This has not occurred with qualifying standards. I took the Division I, Division II, and Division III indoor 2009 qualifying standards and placed them side by side with adjustments for track size listed. It became apparent there was no consistency between like standards. A case in point to highlight this using 2009 NCAA Division II and NCAA Division III standards is the men’s 1 Mile run. The qualifying standard in both Division II and Division III for the men’s 1 Mile is 4:08.5. That means regardless of division the athlete is running at the same velocity, therefore, any adjustment should be similar. Division II has an adjustment from a larger track to a smaller track of .4, while Division III has an adjustment of 1.2. How one can be three times larger is problematic for us given the adjustment should be the same.
METHODOLOGY
In May, 2009, Direct Athletics, a meet entry, and data management company which uses web-based technologies for track & field supplied me a data set from the 2009 indoor track & field season which comprised almost 50,000 performances that filled 854 pages. The data set from Direct Athletics encompassed the following events: 200, 400, 800, 1 Mile, 3000, 5000, 4x400 Relay, and Distance Medley Relay which are the events affected by track size. This is the first time the track & field committee has had data of this nature. The data provided an opportunity to compare the same athlete running on various sized tracks all throughout the indoor season. The Direct Athletics data covered all three NCAA divisions (DI-DII-DIII) along with athletes from NAIA, and junior colleges. This provided a good cross-section to analyze. Using the data set from Direct Athletics each event was reviewed to find multiple performances by the same athlete over different sized tracks during the 2009 season. After review, I chose to omit any performance that fell before Christmas, since I felt that would skew the results. Most athletes who compete prior to Christmas are just completing their fall training program that is usually conducted on an outdoor track, and is not consistent with indoor track training. To attempt to find the most consistent set of performances I settled on the time period of meets being held from January 9th through the end of the regular season, which tended to be the third weekend in February. I chose to exclude any conference championship performance in this analysis since I felt the dynamics of that event itself would add a characteristic not found during the regular season. In research methodology one is looking for the most consistent set of parameters. Most athletes are tapered, rested and have a different motivational perspective for their conference championship, unlike the regular season. So essentially I looked at a 7-week period to compare performances. I also looked specifically for performances that would come in successive weeks, or perhaps separated by two weeks. If I found an athlete that competed on January 9th on a flat 200 track in the 400 meters, and then competed again on February 14th on an oversized track in the 400 meters, I did not feel that was a good comparative situation. Ideally, what I was looking for were situations where an athlete competed in three or four successive weeks on both sized tracks since it would provide an excellent comparison. An example of this would be a hypothetical female athlete “A” competing in the 400 meters.
January 10 58.10 200 flat track
January 17 58.01 200 flat track
January 24 57.88 200 flat track
January 31 56.22 300 meter track
February 7 57.94 200 flat track
February 14 56.01 300 meter track
This analysis would provide relative information on the time differential between a flat 200 track and an oversized 300 meter track. In this example I would have recorded a time differential of 1.8 (an average time of the two 300 meter performances with an average time of the flat 200 performances) for athlete “A”.
LIMITATION OF STUDY
One limitation in the Direct Athletics data set is athletes from the top ranked programs never compete on flat 200 meter tracks. Not one of the top 10 scoring teams (NCAA Indoor finish) from either gender competed on a flat 200 track during the 2009 season. In fact, the only top 20 programs from either gender that actually competed on a flat 200 facility were ones that have a flat 200 meter track on their campus, and utilized it for one or two home contests. One could surmise from this coaches of top ranked programs know they must compete on facilities that provide the best opportunity for qualifying which does not include flat 200 tracks. A second limitation is that Direct Athletics is not the exclusive data entry company for colleges. I would estimate Direct Athletics has about 60% of the market and the size of the data set they did have should provide us confidence in the outcomes. A third limitation is the data set was not comprehensive enough to make a conclusion between 300 meter tracks and banked 200 tracks. That was one of the peripheral issues we were hoping to address from the data set since we had had some preliminary discussions about whether to separate banked 200 tracks and 300 meter tracks when it came to NCAA qualifying standards. While Division II and Division III do currently separate those two facilities, unfortunately, from the data received no conclusions could be drawn between the two. If Direct Athletics is chosen by the NCAA as the only acceptable meet entry company for 2010, this type of analysis will be possible during the post-2011 indoor season (two full seasons of analysis).
DIFFERENCE IN TRACK SIZE
In indoor track & field the actual size of the track affects the ability to run fast, and thus achieve a qualifying performance. Those events most affected by track size include the 200, 400, 800, 1 Mile, 3000, 5000, 4x400 Relay, and Distance Medley Relay. Track size does not have an effect on the 60, 60 Hurdles, Triple Jump, Long Jump, High Jump, Pole Vault, Shot Put, and Weight Throw. The combined events are affected only in the Women’s Pentathlon 800, and the Men’s Heptathlon 1000. All oval (or circular) tracks cause a runner to slow somewhat when running on the turn as opposed to running on the straight. This is true on indoor tracks (flat or banked) as well as outdoor tracks. This is caused primarily because on each stride a runner loses contact with the track for a brief period of time, depending on the speed of the runner. While in this “flight” phase the runner continues in a straight line that is a tangent to the turn. When the runner lands they must use a small part of their momentum (energy) to redirect themselves such that they are back on line with the circular path they are trying to follow. This happens every step on the turn as a runner compensates and adjusts to the motion. This is momentum (and time) lost which is not lost when running in a straight line. Banking the turns reduces this effect somewhat (again depending on the speed of the runner), but does not cancel the effect entirely. The radius of the turn also has a small effect in the overall time of a race. An oversize track does not just run faster because the turns are more gentle, it also runs faster because the runner has to negotiate fewer turns during the same race. For example, a miler on a 200 meter track runs 16 turns, while the same race on a 300 meter runs only 11 turns. It is this 5-turn differential which contributes to faster times on oversize tracks. While there presently is no formula or conversion factor known to synthesize this occurrence into a mathematical process, we do know that there are multiple factors involved and we have a data set which is more than ample to demonstrate the negative effect of a flat track.
FACILITY REVIEW
Currently there are at least 59 Division I institutions which have a flat 200 meter track facility, while 17 utilize a banked 200 meter facility, and 14 have an oversized facility ranging from 236 meters to 320 meters. There are other odd-sized configurations (160 meter, 176yd, etc.) but for the purpose of this examination the only three examined were the flat 200, banked 200, and oversized. There are also three non-Division I institutions that have an oversized or banked facility, which may host Division I programs (Grand Valley State, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, an NCAA Division II institution has a new 300 meter track facility, and they host many Division I programs in the region). For this analysis only Division I facilities were examined. Approximately 63% of all Division I institutions that have an indoor track & field facility have a flat 200 track. It would be both logical and rationale for us to assume that if 63% of Division I institutions have a flat 200 track, and if those institutions hosted 63% of the available meets on those facilities, then somewhere around that same percentage would be qualifying marks for the championships. This is not happening since the trend has been to move away from competing on 200 flat tracks in lieu of banked or oversized tracks. While bringing back the ability of institutions to host meets on their 200 meter flat facility was not a primary function of this analysis, it is a positive by-product of the recommendations. Track & Field is under scrutiny by administrators all over the country in this time of cost-containment and financial efficiency. Serious questions have been raised by athletic directors as to why their coaching staff can’t/won’t host competitions for their fans, and for financial purposes. These adjustments to the indoor qualifying standards will provide a better opportunity for the 63% of Division I institutions who have 200 meter flat tracks. In the end we should be hopeful that more teams will choose to compete at a institution that has a 200 flat track, and not be worried their athletes have no chance of attaining an NCAA qualifying mark.
200 meter FLAT Division I Track Facilities (59)
Arkansas State Army Ball State Bowling Green Brown
Bucknell Central Michigan Clemson Colgate Colorado
Connecticut Cornell Dartmouth Delaware Eastern Illinois
E. Michigan E. Washington Farl-Dickinson Florida George Mason
Hampton Houston Illinois Illinois State Indiana State
Iowa Kansas Kansas State Lehigh Liberty
LSU Manhattan Maryland (PGC) McNeese St. Michigan
Michigan State Minnesota Missouri North Carolina Northern Iowa
Ohio State Pittsburgh Princeton Purdue Oklahoma
Rhode Island Robert Morris Seton Hall Southern Illinois South Carolina
Syracuse Utah State Washington St. Weber State W. Illinois
W. Michigan Wisconsin Wisconsin(Mil) West Virginia
200 meter BANKED Division I Track Facilities (17)
Armory, NYC Arkansas Boise State Boston Univer. Harvard
Idaho State Indiana IUPUI (NIFS) Montana State Navy
Nebraska New Mexico Penn State Reggie Lewis Texas A&M
Virginia Tech Yale
OVERSIZED Division I Track Facilities (14)
Air Force – 268m Akron – 300m Appalachian St.– 300m BYU – 352 yds. E. Tennessee St – 280y
Idaho – 290 m Iowa State – 300m Kentucky – 291m Kent State – 300m Middle Tenn. St.-280y
N. Arizona -300m Notre Dame – 352yd Texas Tech – 233m Washington – 307m
2009 ANALYSIS OF NCAA QUALIFYING
An analysis of the 2009 NCAA Division I Men’s & Women’s Indoor Qualifying Performances is an indicator of the issue facing coaches and athletes in their attempt to reach lofty NCAA standards. Unlike outdoor track, where all facilities are exactly the same size (400 meters, although radius may be different), which provides more standardization in the qualifying process, indoor tracks seem to be forcing institutions to travel to the banked or oversized facilities in hopes of hitting an NCAA standard. In 2009 there were 1322 indoor Proof of Performance (POP) forms submitted for the women. Of those 1322 POP forms 583 (44%) would be the ones we should examine as they come from the grouping of events that would be affected by track size. Here is the breakdown of number of qualifiers in each event with the number in parentheses after the event the total number of qualifiers in that event:
200 FLAT 200 BANKED OVERSIZED
Women’s 200 (57) 2 47 8
Women’s 400 (72) 6 49 17
Women’s 800 (83) 2 45 36
Women’s 1 Mile (117) 7 54 56
Women’s 3000 (94) 3 43 48
Women’s 5000 (76) 5 40 31
Women’s 4x400 (52) 0 27 25
Women’s DMR (32) 0 19 13
TOTAL 25 (4%) 324 (56%) 234 (40%)
We can contrast that with the breakdown of the 739 NCAA qualifying POP forms submitted from those events that would not be affected by track size although this may not be an exact representation as it would be logical to assume athletes in the following events would have traveled to meets with their teammates looking to run fast on the above events.
200 FLAT 200 BANKED OVERSIZED
Women’s Long Jump (76) 15 39 22
Womens’ Triple Jump (71) 11 48 12
Women’s High Jump (62) 9 34 19
Women’s Pole Vault (115) 17 50 48
Women’s Shot Put (87) 17 30 40
Womens’ Weight Throw (75) 19 30 26
Women’s 60 sprint (78) 11 42 35
Women’s 60 Hurdles (109) 29 54 26
Women’s Pentathlon (66) * 14 32 22
TOTAL 142 (19%) 359 (48%) 250 (33%)
For the men in 2009 there were 1308 indoor Proof of Performance (POP) forms submitted for the men. Of those 1308 POP forms 581 (44%) would be the ones we should examine as they come from the grouping of events which would be affected by track size. Here is the breakdown of number of qualifiers in each event with the number in parentheses after the event the total number of qualifiers in that event:
200 FLAT 200 BANKED OVERSIZED
Men’s 200 (67) 4 40 23
Men’s 400 (77) 1 39 37
Men’s 800 (119) 3 47 69
Men’s 1 Mile (77) 2 37 38
Men’s 3000 (65) 3 22 40
Men’s 5000 (73) 1 13 59
Men’s 4x400 (58) 1 17 38
Men’s DMR (45) 0 15 30
TOTAL 15 (2.5%) 230 (39%) 344 (59%)
200 FLAT 200 BANKED OVERSIZED
Men’s Long Jump (65) 5 44 16
Men’s Triple Jump (88) 9 71 8
Men’s High Jump (75) 17 35 23
Men’s Pole Vault (85) 14 54 17
Men’s Shot Put (72) 12 32 28
Men’s Weight Throw (92) 25 31 36
Men’s 60 sprint (77) 17 37 13
Men’s 60 Hurdles (80) 19 40 21
Men’s Pentathlon (65) 16 33 16
TOTAL 134 (20%) 377 (54%) 178 (25%)
Cleary, track size makes a significant difference between the ability to qualify on flat 200 track in those events most affected by track size. On the women’s side only 4% of the qualifiers in the most affected events (200-400-800-1 Mile-3000-5000-4x400-DMR) qualified on a flat 200 facility while 19% of athletes qualified on a like facility in events where track size is not as important (LJ-TJ-HJ-PV-SP-Wt-60-60H-Hept). On the men’s side only 2.5% of the qualifiers in the most affected events qualified on a flat 200 facility while 20% of athletes qualified on a like facility in events where track size is not as important.
DIVISION II & DIVISION III
Currently, both NCAA Division II and Division III have indoor qualifying standards over four categories, under 200, flat 200, banked 200, and oversized. As stated in the Limitation section, I am not confident in making a recommendation at this time on a differential in the banked and oversized tracks with the data received.
SUGGESTIONS FOR NCAA QUALIFYING STANDARDS
It should be noted that my recommendations are “conservative” in nature. When the NCAA track & field committee requested assistance in 1983 for conversions for altitude performances, , the researcher that provided the final report was asked to be conservative in the conversions. This was done to appease altitude coaches, be politically palatable to the larger coaching body, and to make sure the adjustment wasn’t too large. I have adopted that same philosophy with the recommendations. As will be indicated in the summary and recommendations for future study, I look at this process as a two-pronged project, provide some measure of immediate relief, and then re-analyze in two years to take the next step. My recommendations will change one long-standing principle. If you look at the past adjustments, the men have always had a greater adjustment in each event than women. When I first began reviewing the data, I questioned why that principle had been established? To date, I do not have an answer, and the reality of looking at the data set indicated the adjustment should be greater for women than men. As stated above in the Difference in Track Size section it is an easy concept to accept that when an athlete is running around a turn, it will cause the athlete to slow down in some manner. Therefore, women athletes who are generally running at a slower velocity than male athletes will actually take a greater amount of time to complete a turn than a male athlete. Even on the straightaways, a female athlete is not running as fast, so the adjustment should be greater, not less. For the three events which specifically list a qualifying standard for an undersized (<200 meters) track (200, 400, 4x400) I chose to keep the adjustment the same as currently used, given there is no evidence that any athlete ever competes on an undersized track, and it is impossible to make hypotheses with no data.
SUMMARY AND FURTHER STUDY
Going into the research project I believe everyone on the track and field committee was aware through no more than common sense that athletes had a disadvantage trying to qualify on flat 200 tracks in select events. That should come as no surprise. What will come with new and continuing information is the magnitude of the disadvantage. I would like to provide one final illustration to the committee about the magnitude of the disadvantage on a flat track, and the need to continue this research. Xxxxxxxx ran in the late xxx. She was the xxxxx place finisher in the indoor xxxx, and outdoor xxxxx champion in the same event. Her home track at xxxxx was a flat 200 and most of the tracks in the xxxx she competed on during her career were flat 200 tracks. Over 30 times she competed on a flat 200 track during her four year competitive career. The year she placed xxxxxx in the indoor xxxxx meet and was xxxxx Outdoor Champion she was never able to run faster than 23.79 on a flat 200 track. And this is someone who ran xxxxxx and xxxxx outdoors! Her all-time indoor 200 meter best on flat 200 track (23.79) would not even hit the adjusted automatic standard I am proposing (23.70), although it would be high on the provisional list. I believe this is just one example of many I could provide of the difficulty presented. But as previously stated, I believe this should be a two phase process, with the first phase a conservative one. This is so the track & field committee doesn’t have too many auto-qualifiers in the first year of the revised qualifying standards. If Direct Athletics is going to be used as the sole-source provider of data management, then they will need to find a method for more clearly differentiating between track size. The data set they provided me was difficult to review given their category listing of track size was inconsistent. In order to do any follow-up each meet entry should clearly state where the performance took place, and what sized track it came on (<200, 200 flat, 200 banked, oversized). In that way, the data can be sorted more easily and comparisons made more precisely. I would strongly suggest that any follow-up not take place until May, 2011. In that way, it will give the track & field committee two years to collect data, and see if any further adjustments need to be made. This time period will also provide an opportunity for the committee to see how the first adjustments are working. I believe that thresholds should be established when analyzing data again. I would suggest that in order to provide consistency to any further study/analysis the track & field committee only use the following minimum performance thresholds to examine.