Deep Dive: Breaking Down the CIF State Meet

Comparing the 2021 State Meet to the 2021 Clovis Invite (Full Report)

I was interested to see how much progress runners have made since midseason, so I pulled up this comparison. The overall average for the state meet is MUCH better, but that's largely because of the absence of JV and Frosh-Soph runners - when you just have everyone's top 7, of course the average will be better. Interestingly, of the 632 common athletes that raced in both meets, only 36 ran faster at the state meet (not what I expected). Again, the elite athletes seemed to fare the best, improving by an average of 5-8 seconds. For the rest of the field, the difference between the two meets is miniscule; essentially, nearly everyone ran the same at the state meet as they did at Clovis. So many factors could contribute to this (harder courses for section meets causing fatigue, lesser training base before the season leading to burnout, etc). I am already intrigued to see how the 2022 season stacks up, and whether California is back to the same depth it had pre-pandemic.