NEW RANKINGS RELEASED

The Yorktown girls are sinking and the boys are treading water in the latest team rankings released Monday by the Indiana High School Swimming Coaches Association.

Head Coach Brad Grieshop's girls have dropped from a two-way tie for 27th in the November 23 rankings to a three-way tie for 35th (with Twin Lakes and Evansville Reitz). The boys remain among Indiana's elite in the #8 position.

Several Yorktown swimmers continue to be ranked among Indiana's best in their individual events. Junior Adam Voss leads the way, holding a pair of Top 10 rankings this week. Voss is 5th in the 200-yard freestyle and 7th in the 100-yard butterfly. Sophomore Austin Dunn is #14 in the 100-yard butterfly. And sophomore Larah Beaver is the state's sixth ranked competitor in the 100-yard backstroke.

The rankings are not without their problems--they are at best a very incomplete snapshot of what is happening in the sport at any particular time. Coaches are not required to report the best efforts of their swimmers (or divers), so some athletes who deserve to be ranked aren't, and some swimmers who really don't belong in the poll end up there simply because their coaches bother to send in their results.

Examples? Yorktown diver Sam Mahon's season best of 197.10 points would place her 22nd this week if the people who compile the poll knew about it (individual event rankings are based on a Top 32 format). So eleven divers from across Indiana find themselves in the rankings with inferior performances (with as few as 156 points) while Sam is left out in the cold. Hardly fair to her, but reality all the same.

Need more? The Yorktown girls would be ranked 9th in the state this week in the 200-yard medley relay, 12th in the 400-yard freestyle relay, and 15th in the 200-yard freestyle relay. Again, you can't be ranked if the pollmakers aren't aware of you. And your team ranking suffers from the lack of points you would have claimed by being included in each event.

Some coaches don't report results for strategic reasons (they believe opposing coaches use that information to alter their lineups in upcoming dual meets). But with the wealth of information now available on newspaper and team websites, blogs, and social networking sites, that argument went down the drain a long time ago.

My opinion is a simple one--athletes whose performances are worthy of state rankings should be in the poll, period. It's good for the athlete, it's good for the school, and it's a good recruiting tool for the private clubs most schools rely on to develop their future talent.

So coaches, please take a few minutes, e-mail your athletes' results to the proper people each weekend, and let the kids who bust their humps in a sport that is already undercovered get a little well deserved recognition.

P.S.--That's good for YOUR reputation as a coach, too!