My institution recently decided to start rebuilding the track & field program. I had just watched the NCAA outdoor championship meet and it seemed like the top teams were all competitive in the sprints and relays. To test if this was actually true, I used the Director’s Cup points database and recent championship results to try to determine what the best method to build a track & field program is.
The Results: The best track & field programs are, in fact, sprint / relay / jump heavy. However, the institutions that score the most combined Directors Cup points across all three seasons (Cross Country / Indoor / Outdoor) do a good job at placing high in all three.
NOTE: The PDF viewer is a little wonky because I’ve got some horizontally oriented pages in there. For best results viewing the report, click the Download button below.
Track-Field-Analysis-ReportAn interesting next step would be to reverse engineer what an All-American track star looks like when they come out of high school as a recruit. For example, if all of the participants in the final heat of the NCAA 100M dash ran 10.6 or better in high school. It would be reasonable to expect that a 10.6 second HS senior has at least a chance to someday make the NCAA final field because they have at least that one characteristic in common. A large data set that spans the entire careers of athletes would be enough to run simulations and project a range of possible results. It would be a true measure of an athlete’s “floor and “ceiling” potential.