The Predictor presents:

 The 2006-2007 Regular Season Computer Ratings 

1/24/07

An explanation.  I have been relatively quiet for the past couple of wrestling seasons, at least when it comes to publishing rankings.  A lot of factors went into my decision to refrain, but chief among them were family illness, leaving my career, increased political activism, and finishing a long overdue Bachelor’s degree at Western. All of these challenges have now been managed, and I found time last Fall to re-establish my database of Washington High School Wrestling.

 The database is a simple one, utilizing Microsoft Access, and consists of only six Tables, each related to the other in some way.  I track: Individuals, Schools, Leagues, Tournaments, Team Tournament Places, and Individual Tournament Places.  I do not track head-to-head competition among individuals, or Duals among teams—that would be WAY too complex and time-consuming. 

Into those six tables goes the raw data.  It’s pretty basic. The Individuals table simply contains name, ID, graduation year, and School ID.  The School ID is keyed to the Schools table, which tracks important stuff about the school, including enrollment and coaches’ names.  Individual Tourney Places tracks the Wrestler ID, Tourney ID, weight, place, and points earned (for which I have only entered the MatClassic points). And importantly, the Tournaments table tracks Tourney date, Location, and a “toughness rating.” This is the part where I can begin to explain my methodology. 

Let’s start back at the MatClassic records in the database.  I have entered every individual, weight, place earned and points earned at MatClassic for the last eleven years.  This is my basic gauge for every calculation.  Since I am trying to create predictive statistics related to the state tournament, existing MatClassic tourney data is a natural place to start.  I hypothesize that more than the place earned at MatClassic, the team points earned are explanatory of any give wrestler’s talent.  In a four-year wrestling career, an individual has the potential to earn up to 120 team points (four appearances, four championships, straight pins all the way through.) No Washington wrestler has achieved such a feat, but Burke Barnes came the closest, notching 113.5 points in four tries.  Only five wreslters, including Barnes have cleared 100 points: Barnes, Martin Mitchell (111), Tommy Owen (104), Brandon Sitch (102), and probably Coyte Cooper (99+, but the record is not complete enough to tell). Less than 20% of MatClassic participants will earn at least 30 team points in a career. 

 Anyway, this gives a broad statistical representation of wrestling talent.  And it forms the basis for my Tournament rating calculation.  I take the total MatClassic points earned by placers at a given Tournament and calculate (with a couple of adjustment multipliers) that tournament’s overall Toughness.  The Tri-State in 2005 had 1,907 cumulative MatClassic points in its top six placers alone.  That’s one tough tourney.  But then I calculate this year’s tourney as well (1,230 MC points) and build a weighted average of the two to derive a rating.  Tri-state has a toughness rating of 200 for 2005, and 201 for 2006.  On the other hand, the Edmonds District Invitational only had 41 MC points in ’05, and 30 this year.  It barely made a rating of 1 (there are a very few tournaments with ratings of 0).  

Once all of the Tournaments had ratings, I then calculated individual ratings based upon combined score of MC points earned (with multipliers for school size—1.0 for 3-4A, .86 for 2A, and .5 for AB), and a calculated score derived from Tourney toughness and placing.  The machine adds up all of the calculations, and viola! Ratings, that are then ordered and sorted by weight class.

This is not a tiny undertaking.  I have entered, by my own hand, more than 35,000 entire records into this database.  The multipliers may take some tweaks, a may adjust some scoring, but I stand by the ratings.

 NOTE---I DID NOT SAY RANKINGS.  These are ratings, and they only represent the data in, followed by the machine’s calculations.  If there a holes in the data, or a wrestler simply did not place at any tournaments this season, they are not rated. What can I say—the data is only as good as what gets sent to Dave Gilbertson, because that’s where I get it.  It will only get better as more reporting of tourney results occurs.

 Finally, the numbers are really interesting—and they don’t track significantly away from Dave’s judgment on rankings.  In the next week, I will post overall individual ratings, individual ratings by class, and cumulative team ratings.  The team ratings are especially interesting because they are NOT weighted for class.  They are true from 4A to 1B.  That ought to start some discussions. 

Finally, if you have questions that I can answer via the database, please ask.  Or if you have information that might fill some holes (grad years, corrections), let me know. I’ll take your questions and advice at wapredictor@hotmail.com.  

Now, some Individual Ratings: