Request for Amateur A class

 

Any chance we could get the HWFD added in to be tracked for overall rankings in the amateur classes?  The 20# sheaf would be great as well, but at the moment the HWFD would be a pretty legit request IMO.  I have never attented a game where the 56wfd was not contested, so the inclusion of this event would be great. 

While I know this will drop me down quite a bit in the rankings, there are several athletes that have made great strides in this event (one set the world record) this year.  Just a request.

Thanks again for the database by the way.  It is a great way for many to stay motivated.

The problem with that is that as it is, there's one stone, one weight, one hammer, and one height event. Add in the 56, and you'd have two weights - giving an unfair advantage to good weight throwers.

I see, by using just the one weight it gives a more balanced reflection of the athletes performance. That makes sense. Just for the record, I'm not considered a good weight thrower. I really want you to figure in the caber  since thats the only event I feel good about. Like I said earlier, I appreciate all that this site does for us. I have been looking at this website since I started throwing in 1999 and I have gained a tremendous amount of knowledge and inspiration here. Thanks.

Scott

Chris, I left you a voicemail today. Call me when you get a minute. I passed along the Happy Birthday wishes, thank you. I was wondering if you were going to Dave's game in Tazewell? I'll give you another shot at the caber title, since that's the only thing I can beat you in this year. Take care brother.

Scott

In my area (Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, etc.) amateurs don't throw the 20lb sheaf.
They do further south; further north many games don't
throw sheaf at all.

There's an easy way to solve the problem of ranking
events that might not be thrown in all areas. How about
instead of a total score over 4 events, or 5, or 7, or
9, you do an average? Include all events, but don't
count an event where an athlete has no score. Some
people would be scored based on 7 events, some 8, some
9, but since it's an average you can still do a direct
comparison.

Oh, yeah - I would say don't include sheaf, because
right now 16lb and 20lb sheaf scores are being lumped
together. Maybe for next year it they can be broken out
into different events.

I would agree with the 56 wfd but the sheaf is not contested in every area as stated above. I'm in the south and we always throw the sheaf but it varies from game to game as to whether it's a 16 or 20 pounder. I agree with Terry, the board is okay like it is and we appreciate all the hard work that goes into it. It wouldn't hurt my feelings to have a national governing body but I think we're still a few years away from that, if ever.

Scott

Kurt, I think that the best option would be to have the list exactly as it is now with an option to also see an extended rankings list that mirrors the Bethelehem system.

That way, if someone is in a part of the country that doesn't do one or more of the events they can refer to the current 4-event rankings.  If you want to see where you are as an all-arounder you can select the 9-event option. 

If guys want to get their rankings up on the 9-event system they'll simply have to look for games that include the other events.  If they don't want to do that then they can stick with the current system.

The biggest issue I see is the 20 versus 16 pound sheaf.  If you wanted to go this far, you could have the system calculate each of their best scores with the 16 and 20 against the records and credit them with their highest score of the two.  Of course you would have to build in the distinction between the two into the score entry system.

My motives are completely selfish...of the 7 standard events, my best 3 are the one's not included in the database.

I like Carlos' suggestion. Though, obviously, some games do all the events
and some only a few... would you average the score from each event, or just
use the 4 events we use now, and if there was no heavy hammer contested,
too bad??

Carlos,

I am actually already planning something like you stated, with each athlete getting a 'NASGA' decatholon score for each Games.  I fooled around with it for the Celtic Classis rankings earlier this year and would you believe the order of the top 10 was the same?

Here's what I did:  Found the NASGA score for each athlete for each Games they were in, then for each of these scores found what percentage of the total possible points they got for each Games, then averaged these percentages together.  Sounds complicated but what you end up with is a great way to determine who the best overall athlete is over all the Games they were in.

Would you believe Ryan was over 90% of the max possible decathalon points at two different Games in the past year?

 

I definitely agree about lower ranked athletes consistently beating higher ranked athletes.  For me that is more because the sheaf, caber, and HWFD are my three best events. 

I don't know how you cherry pick an event though.  You either throw a certain distance or you don't.  Maybe you are thinking of it differently?

Jumping a bit late to this, but just wanted to add my own observation/
opinion. Looking at the games I have attended in the Pacific Northwest, and
doing a very limited non-scientific random sampling of other game results
from this database, it seems like more often then not, light hammer is
usually contested, whereas heavy hammer only sometimes is. Seems like the
db should be comparing results from light hammer instead of heavy
hammer since it seems to be more widely and more often contested.

- Scott

I stand corrected. Ah well, so much for random sampling. I guess out
here on the West Coast, we have more room to toss the light hammer
around.

Oh well, I'd agree (with others) that the ranking criteria needs adjusting
since it looks like it has an inadvertent built-in bias. Perhaps including all
the standard weighted implements commonly thrown (lt/hvy hammer, lt/hvy
wfd, wfh, and open stone??) is good enough?

- Scott