winchesetr wrote: Chattahoochee: I'll be real, going into this I'd never heard of them, but I was definitely impressed with their placings
Probably because until now, there was no reason to know our name. The jump reminds me of Acton-Boxborough last year. Before now, we were probably comparable (to me at least
) to Wayzata or Hopkins - we could do well in-state, but no one outside of the the area (Southeast US, MN-WI, New England area, etc.) knew who we were - but now we have a shot a top 20 at Nationals.
winchesetr wrote: These results are results are really interesting, not only because of the placement of teams, but because of the grouping of points for those teams.
Agreed, although I would disagree a bit on your specific groupings. I like to make images for this sort of thing:
Looking at the image, this is how I would group the teams:
- Troy, of course, is way ahead of the pack; the point gap between them and second place is similar to that of second to eighth.
- Solon and Harriton are neck-in-neck, although I'm not sure whether Harriton is using their upperclassmen team.
- As winchesetr said, LASA is isolated; substantially behind Solon & Harriton, but substantially ahead of the next group.
- I would put Seven Lakes A, Clements, Mentor A and Chattahoochee A in the next group, since LASA to Seven Lakes A to Chattahoochee A to Mentor B goes 26-21-24 point gaps.
Notes:
1) Troy was ridiculously far ahead, which tells me either Solon and Harriton aren't as good as they were two years ago, or Troy has just gotten way better.
2) As East said, Clements did well, since LASA and Seven Lakes tend to go to more out-of-state invitationals (although the predicted top three placement didn't happen).
3) Mentor was close behind Seven Lakes and Clements despite having split teams; if they had stacked, they probably could have matched or beaten LASA.
4) Chattahoochee has gotten way better, medaling as much as Seven Lakes (although with less firsts and seconds), and beating several teams that placed in the top 20 at Nationals last year.
5) New Trier has continued their trend of getting progressively weaker over the last five years; they lost to Seven Lakes' B team.
6) Whatever happened to the New York teams? Fayetteville-Manlius and Columbia both placed far behind where I expected based on their previous Nationals performances.
