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| The Eternal Question: In which indoor track event do the girls do their best relative to the guys? | |
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Every year on a Saturday in early March, a lot of the top high school NY boys and girls track prodigies trek to a gorge-ridden spot in a central part of the state to show off their prowess in events that require them to run fast, or jump high and far, or heave a heavy ball a long way distant. During the day, the two genders exist in separate alternate universes called morning and afternoon, and the activities they battle in are sometimes mirror images and sometimes slightly altered in ways that are usually not clear to the observers at the meet (largely adoring parents or equally adoring college coaches). The fact that the girls run the 1500m and the guys do the 1600m is evident from the position of the start, but the differences between the guys' and girls' 55m hurdles or shot put are not that noticeable unless you can see hurdlers jumping next to each other or can hold the guys' and girls' weights in your hands (12lb. vs. 8.8lb.). Outside of the occasional golfer, field goal kicker, bowler, or wrestler on a boys' or fully merged sports team, the girls don't compete on the same playing grounds as the guys. Track is no different, and you do not see a girls champion like Jenn Thill having to duke it out with the guys in the pole vault while using a lighter pole. In general, for mature adult track athletes (say 18-32 year range), the men perform at a level that is 8% to 12% higher than women in the running events, 12% to 18% difference in jumping events, and a much bigger difference in the throwing events whose magnitude can't be determined because of the difference of weight in the equipment, though college women's throwing distances are pretty even with the men's in the shot and discus because of the weight disparity of the thrown object. Until an indoor track event resembling a 60-mile ultramarathon up Pike's Peak is instituted so the girls can dominate -- admittedly an unlikely eventuality unless Ann Trason takes over the administration of NY HS track -- the guys will continue to carry a big advantage into Barton Hall in their half of the events' stack of results. Expecting just as much effort out of the girls as the guys is a given, but there is just much more of a guy on average physically to get that effort out of. Although the NY girls' tracksters fit the standard mold of athletic comparisons pretty closely for the never-ceasing battle, they do have a few unique weapons that could allow them to turn the tables and demand an unconditional surrender by the guys. Three areas where they have swept away expectations and destroyed conventions are the following:
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Rating the Guys against the Girls |
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When competitive running for a sizeable American population first became popular back in the 1870s, one of the first forms of competition that became popular was a racing form borrowed from horse tracks called the handicap, which for the top running guys generally meant not that you had carry extra weights on your treks but that you gave away a head start of a few minutes to slower runners in long distance road races. Though handicaps are not held much for runners anymore, it would be a useful and more fun method for scoring the comparison in an event-by-event countdown of how the guys compare to the girls in the 15 main events of the NY indoor track world. So the question for indoor track is, if you stacked up the boys against the girls in a fairly competitive way for comparison in a no-holds-barred, winner-take-all, spike-for-spike contest, what allowance handicap would the guys graciously serve up in the interests of good sportsmanship and maybe one of those nice white shirts that the NYSPHSAA hands out to great altruistic athletes at the beginning of the States meets? Wikipedia says that human males tend on average to outweigh females by 15%, so that's obviously a good point to start at. Of course running with an extra 15% more body mass is not necessarily an advantage, but hopefully the guys have developed the muscles to efficiently carry that extra poundage, and there is an event with a round metal ball where having more girth is a decided advantage. But NY girls have won a lot of renown in track both nationally and internationally, so maybe 15% is too much of an advantage. Since this is 2013 and we're about one-sixth or 17% of the way through, we'll set a demarcation handicap of 13.17% for no really good reason except that I have a suspicion it might just lead to a very close contest here. The final question for the Battle of the Genders (as we'll call it) is which results should be used to judge how well the genders do in an event? The possibilities are endless, but the ones I use here involve an average of three different sets of results reaching back in two of the cases through the last 6 years of indoors States results and in the other case to season's results for the last two years. All three types of results run pretty close together when digging for that guys vs. girls performance ratio, but hopefully they eliminate a result skewed by one freakily good athlete or one unusually productive year for one of genders. The results used are: Winning mark for champion at States, 2008-2013 (WS). This score was the average mark of the guys and girls States winners over the last 6 years in the 15 events. The ratio of the girls' vs. guys' marks is the WS score. Top mark for the champion at States, 2008-2013 (TS). This is perhaps a more skewable mark if a huge phenomenon shows up in an event, but there was nothing out of the ordinary, although a few guys and girls did lower their events States mark as did first Emily Lipari and Mary Cain in the 1500m in 2010 and 2012 and Chad Noelle in the 3200m in 2011. The ratio of the girls' vs. guys' marks is the TS score. Top 10 results in each event on Milesplit leaderboard for two years, 2012-2013 (TL). The average of the top 10 performances throughout the season were compiled. The ratio of the girls' vs. guys' marks is the TL score. The final BotG score is determined from an equally weighted average of the WS, TS, and TL averages, rounded to a score like .8234, indicating the girls are performing at an 82.34% level compared to the boys. Note that the results in the guys 1600m and 3200m events were converted to an equivalent 1500m and 3000m times to compare to the girls. No allowances can be made for the differences in boys' and girls' 55m hurdles and hurdles events, but if the guys are going to cry about the girls throwing a 3.2 lb lighter shot, they should have football taken away from them. And frankly, shot put is one event where the guys can give an even larger advantage to the girls and still not break a sweat. |
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The Events Stack Challenge
Rather than trying to build suspense in announcing results and risk making a horrible botch such as the movie Lincoln did with its 13th Amendment vote roll call, the order of the events stack here starts with the most guys'-dominated event at the top and works its way down to the one in which the women do comparatively best against the guys using that 13.17% handicap bonus. The girls need to pull a score of .8683 or higher to win the event. Not to pull a spoiler alert, but if you're Kadecia Baird you can be especially proud that not only was your 2013 States winning times (individually and as part of a team) better than average for recent States marks, but you run in events that kick turf in the BotS contest. Jenn Thill in the pole vault was the only other girl to exceed the States average this year, but she competes in an event where the girls soar well below the guys, as can be seen by the second listing below. Also noted in the event info is the ratio for girls' vs. boys' state qualifier standards (SQ percentage, none for relays which just take the SQ meet winner) and for their event participation level marks, where an 82% participation percentage mark indicates 82 girls participate in the event for every 100 guys. The state qualifier standards set for girls how pretty closely to actual performance levels relative to the boys. The biggest difference lies in the shot put, where the girls likely need a lower relative standard to guarantee enough entrants at States. Roll call:
BotG score: .7766 (+9.17% for the guys) SQ percentage: 72.3% Participation percentage: 82% Tally: +1 Guys
BotG score: .7798 (+8.85% for the guys) SQ percentage: 76.9% Participation percentage: 67% Tally: +1 Guys
BotG score: .8057 (+6.26% for the guys) SQ percentage: 79.8% Participation percentage: 93% Tally: +1 Guys
BotG score: .8090 (+5.93% for the guys) SQ percentage: 82.9% Participation percentage: 100.7% Tally: +1 Guys
BotG score: .8373 (+3.10% for the guys) SQ percentage: 82.9% Participation percentage: 104% Tally: +1 Guys
BotG score: .8547 (+1.36% for the guys) SQ percentage: NA Participation percentage: 90% Tally: +1 Guys
BotG score: .8658 (+0.25% for the guys) SQ percentage: NA Participation percentage: 91% Tally: +1 Guys
BotG score: .8688 (+0.05% for the girls) SQ percentage: 85.2% Participation percentage: 82% Tally: +1 Girls
BotG score: .8689 (+0.06% for the girls) SQ percentage: 85.8% Participation percentage: 82% Tally: +1 Girls
BotG score: .8758 (+0.75% for the girls) SQ percentage: NA Participation percentage: 90% Tally: +1 Girls
BotG score: .8809 (+1.26% for the girls) SQ percentage: 87.5% Participation percentage: 71% Tally: +1 Girls
BotG score: .8825 (+1.42% for the girls) SQ percentage: 86.6% Participation percentage: 64% Tally: +1 Girls
BotG score: .8903 (+2.20% for the girls) SQ percentage: 87.6% Participation percentage: 86% Tally: +1 Girls
BotG score: .8997 (+3.14% for the girls) SQ percentage: 90.6% Participation percentage: 86% Tally: +1 Girls
BotG score: .9228 (+5.45% for the girls) SQ percentage: 90.9% Participation percentage: 114% Tally: +1 Girls
BotG Final Tally: Girls 8, Guys 7. However, the scoring margin for the guys in their winning events is 34.82, while the girls only mustered a 14.33 margin. We may need to do that Pikes Peak run to get a definite verdict here, but the guys could make it easier for everyone and accept the unconditional surrender demands. One given is that the girls do relatively far better in the track events than in the field. For anyone who has too much time on their hands and wants to peruse the data, the spreadsheet is at: data doc . |
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No girl today can meet the State Qualifying Standard for the boy's competition in her event. I can't really ever see a girl hitting the guys' standard of 6-4 in the high jump or 43-6 in the triple jump. And it is true that even-up there was no girl at States this year or last year that had a seed time that was that close to the boys' SQ standard that year. But there was an NY girl who wasn't at States who did have a 1 mile time that was good enough to meet the guys' 1600m standard even before the distance conversion. Lop 2 seconds off Mary Cain's Milrose mile time and you have 4:26.25, which is comfortably under the 4:28.74 boys' 1600m standard. In addition, there is that 55m hurdles event where the girls' States winner sometimes does go under the boys' standard, though this year all the leaders were a little short, and yes they do skim 3 inches lower than the guys. But pole vault is definitely an event where the rare girl at the very top flirts with the guys' standard as Jenn Thill earned a seed only 3 inches under at 12-9, and Mary Saxer actually went 5 inches higher than the standard back in 2005.