How long are the odds against anyone toppling Mountain Vista? A virtual meet can help answer that question. Photo by Alan Versaw.
One of the first tools people want to jump to at this time of year is the virtual meet tool. But, without help, it's a little tedious to use on account of needing to pick out all the teams, and only the teams that qualified for state.
I've made that process a whole bunch simpler for you by building "leagues" that have only the teams qualifying for state in each classification.
Note: To carry out the instructions that follow, you need to be a MileSplit Insider (click on the Insider link on the main navigation bar above to start your subscription).
Let's say you'd like to do a virtual state meet on the 5A boys teams. Here's what you need to do:
1. Hover your mouse over Rankings and then slide it down and across a little to Virtual Meets. Click once your move rolls over Virtual Meets.
2. The screen that comes up is the dashboard for the virtual meet tool. It defaults to Boys, but you can select Girls if you want to do a virtual meet for a girls classification. At this time of year it also defaults to Cross Country, which is where you want to be. To select your teams for the virtual meet, simply click on the League dropbox and select State XC Teams - 5A Boys (obviously, you can select any league you want, but this example works us through a virtual meet for the 5A Boys state teams). State XC Teams - 5A Boys contains all teams that qualified for the 5A Boys state race this year. If you want all the teams that qualified for state in 3A Girls, simply select State XC Teams - 3A Girls.
3. As soon as you select the league, the virtual meet calculates. It calculates for all members of the teams who qualified for state but only scores the top five and displaces the next two. Scroll down to the bottom to see the team scoring breakdown.
4. Now the fun begins. Suppose you've noticed that Ben Dingman hasn't run for Rampart since late in September, but he does figure into Rampart's team score. To see what changes when you remove him from the virtual meet, simply hover over his name and click on the X that appears at the left end of the line. That removes him from the virtual meet and the meet instantly rescores. You can do this for any and all runners you anticipate as possibilities not to compete at state. To start over again, simply click on Start Over With New Teams at the bottom of the dashboard.
You might also recall that Cherokee Trail ran at Desert Twilight and the times showing for them are Desert Twilight times. You sense it might be prudent to scale those times back a little for virtual meet analysis. Since you remember reading here that Desert Twilight ran about 26 seconds faster for boys this year than Liberty Bell, you'd like to scale the Cherokee Trail times back by 26 seconds to make them more like the Liberty Bell-ish kind of times most other teams have.
You can do this with the virtual meet tool, but be careful to do it to only those Cherokee Trail runners who competed at Desert Twilight. Otherwise, you corrupt your own analysis. To do this, simply hover your mouse over the times used for Cherokee Trail runners who are scored in the virtual meet. When the edit boxes come up, simply adjust the time used in the virtual meet analysis by 26 seconds (or whatever other time interval you choose). As each time is adjusted, the virtual meet recalculates.
If you're so inclined, you could spend an hour or so at this--maybe working on it during commercial breaks during a football game this afternoon.
5. If you do a 2A virtual meet, there is an extra step to execute. Since 2A runs six and scores three, you will want to adjust the Scoring Rules on the right side of the virtual meet. Enter three for both, then click on the Rescore box. Pretty much instantly, you will see the 2A virtual meet rescored according to the Colorado scoring rules.
Virtual meets are always subject to limitations, but one major limitation is greatly reduced by this point of the season. Almost every team in the state has now run at least once on a fairly fast course. Even Mountain Vista, a team that typically avoids the fastest courses like the plague, ran regionals on Friday on a Rock Canyon course that turned out some of the season's fastest times.
Note that this virtual meet analysis does not incorporate individual qualifiers for state.
So, go ahead, play with this a little and enjoy! Just remember to come up for air now and then.