The rankings of school enrollment in the Bakersfield area have a very loose relationship to the list of successful athletic programs. BHS is near the top in enrollment, which makes sense, but so is Arvin. Arvin has the 3rd highest enrollment of Bakersfield area schools, but typically finishes toward the bottom of the SSL. Centennial and Liberty, athletic powers, have the lowest enrollments of all the Bakersfield public schools. As it turns out, one would have a better idea of how good a school's football or basketball team would be by excluding the part of the enrolled population that receives free lunch from the calculation entirely.
I've tried to embed a spreadsheet with data from 20 area schools below (it's working for me). They are listed in order of their calpreps.com average rating over the past three years in basketball and football. I've used the Calpreps rating before. It is a computer rating like they use for the BCS in college football. As a predictor of who will win a game, it runs right about 80% nationwide. The blind computer does about as well as Zach Ewing has in football this year on teams that he has seen and has injury updates for. So it is a pretty good measure.
Below are graphs of the relationship between total enrollment and performance in football and basketball over the past three years and non free lunch enrollment and the same. The latter relationship is much tighter. The diverging atheltic performances of BHS, Golden Valley, and Arvin - all with similar enrollments - fall right where you would expect given the enrollment of non free lunch kids. They only seem like anomalies if you expect raw enrollment to matter. Ridgeview, Stockdale, and BHS are the only real outliers here. Ridgeview and Stockdale have been under-performing and BHS has been over-performing.
Tehachapi does not win the SSL title every year, but, like the Yankees, they have the best chance to win every year. This has been true since Garces left the league. It may be, in part, because of the culture of "mountain football," the weightlifting program, savvy coaching, etc. However, the success of Tehachapi football and basketball is not at all unusual for a school with its demographics. On the best school-level predictor of athletic success, Tehachapi is more like North, BHS, and Centennial than the other schools in the SSL. Tehachapi is also much closer to these schools geographically. They should move on.
8 comments:
Great research and you've proved your point. Now why don't they create leagues based on the non-free-lunch program enrollment instead of overall enrollment? Maybe it would be hard to give the league a name. The South Disadvantaged League? The North Economically Challenged League? I'm sure this could be worked out. Hopefully the General will pursue the analysis further and find the factors that link economic status to athletic performance. Is it parents not being around? Parents not interested in sports? Kids have to work after school? I look forward to your followup.
The General's friend (well, wife - do I have a wife?) was similarly concerned about explicitly organizing leagues based on economic background. It seems condescending or at least impolite.
However, CIF decisions are currently made by a logic that is mysterious from the outside anyway. I always thought of it as more bungling than reticence, but the effect is the same. They could just look at the numbers and the map and shift a few teams accordingly in their regular back room meeting. No one would look too hard for a reason. It also seems in some cases that economic backgrounds are taken into account, but selectively.
The links between economic status and performance are tricky. One big factor is eligibility. Test scores and presumably grades are highly correlated with economic status. (At the school level, % of students on free lunch explains almost 90% of the variation in the % of the student who score "proficient" on tests in Lang. Arts and Math. That is probably the biggest factor. Schools with a lot of poor kids have a lot of ineligible potential athletes. I am sure your suggestions probably play a part too. Another thing that comes to mind is that jobs at less poor schools tend to be more desirable for coaches. I don't know if that makes a difference.
I should also say that there are exceptions. Some schools do consistently outperform what their demographics would predict. This is impressive enough in sports like Cross Country and Tennis that are not as popular. In football it is even more rare. Sanger High's football program is a huge outlier. According to their demographics, in the long run Sanger should field a team that would beat an average high school team by a field goal. Normal variation around that long run number in a given year would be up to 20 points in either direction. Since 2001, in Sanger's worst year they were 15 points better than average and in their best, 44 points better, with an average of 26. Clovis West is the other outlier I've found, but it isn't as extreme.
One of the limits of being a disembodied spirit is not being able to get the proverbial "boots on the ground" view of these things and sort them out. So I am stuck with these spreadsheets.
I'm sure that in the San Joaquin Valley you'll also regularly find a connection between a school's number of free lunches and it's number of second language learners; the latter having a significant impact on a school's test scores.
In a way, the Central Section is making a move toward the reorganization you'd like to see. Divisions in the section playoffs are now determined by recent success, which as you have shown, is often associated with socio-economic status. Roosevelt-Fresno, for example, though a very large school, plays in the Division III playoff bracket in football. Leagues in the north area of the section are slowly following suit. The TRAC is gradually becoming an all-Clovis Unified League, while the NYL is basically a league of inner-city Fresno schools (nearly all of the FUSD), plus Reedley (beginning in 2010-2011). In other words, the North Yosemite League is code for the "North Economically Challenged League".
You are right about language and test scores.
That is interesting about the realignments up north. Aligning by performance probably amounts to a roughly the same thing in the long run.
How about the East ESL League:
Tranquility High School
Kerman High School
Mendota High School
Central High School
But maybe they're already in a league together, an example of the informal grouping that CIF eventually arrives at.
Tranquility and Mendota are in the West Sierra League, Kerman is in the North Sequoia League, and Central is in the TRAC.
Next year, Central will be the only non-Clovis Unified school in the TRAC. Central is a large district - part urban and part rural - but is obviously at a competitive disadvantage with its league rivals for reasons similar to those mentioned in the post. I foresee Central moving to the CMAC or NYL in the future.
I think that using enrollment is a decent method to organize leagues among the rural schools in the northern area of the Central Section. My assumption is that these towns and school districts have similar demographics, the only variable being the size of the town or district. Private schools and the mountain and coastal communities would be the exceptions.
I'm not clear on the entire process of league realignment, but I'm pretty sure that it is often initiated by the schools. When league realignment meetings are held every couple years, schools will apply to move into leagues in which they feel they can compete. It is my understanding that it is not a top down process.
One issue with league realignment for the SSL is that there are fewer small towns and schools in the southern area. Corcoran and Coalinga were in the SSL in the '80s, but it doesn't seem likely they'd return. The best options would probably be the schools closer to Shafter on the second chart on the post, but they may not feel compelled to move to the SSL if they're already grouped together in a non-power league.
Isn't there something to be said for a "no excuses" attitude, too? It seems that having a Tehachapi or Garces in the league pushes you to make the most of your resources. Sure, having a McFarland in the league might mean more championships, but does it really make you strive to be your best?
I should say that I don't advocate cheers or signs saying "YOU ONLY BEAT US BECAUSE OF THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM!!!" I am also opposed to spotting teams points on the scoreboard or in the minds of players and coaches based on socio-economic variables. No moral victories. I will also grant that there are borderline cases - schools that are likely to be better than the others most years should stay in the league. I just don't think Tehachapi is a borderline case.
Of the 20 public schools in the Bakersfield area, Tehachapi has been the 4th best over the past three years. We would expect them to be 6th best. Then you look where they are. Most of the SSL has to drive past all those city schools on the way to THS. You could kick them out and have a 5 team league. You could add Highland, West, East, the Delano schools, or Foothill. They are all more like the other SSL schools than Tehachapi.
Or one could allow merit to decide everything and organize leagues by ability only. Then follow the English football system of having the bottom team of a higher league trade places with the top team of a lower league each year. Eventually everyone gets to the league of their peers.
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