High School Rifle Team

[Aragorn243]

Third made All Stars due to incorrect entry by another coach.

[Aragorn243]

Yeah, this turned into a mess today. We were all to submit our top shooters last evening so they could be entered onto a spreadsheet and sorted. That got done, the scores were released and I checked things over and they looked about right. I don't see so well anymore so I missed something last night. This morning I get up, get a ding on my phone about a new mail and I check and it's a copy of the shooters list. I figure maybe something was wrong, they updated it and I better double check. My first guy is in 5th, no issue. My second was tied for 7th but listed 8th and I noticed something weird, the 7th place shooters score was .01 higher than hers. Now this is a mathmatical impossibility and I doublechecked the math and then notified the other coach and the fellow running the spreadsheet that something was wrong. I also noted a discrepancy with a shooter outside the top ten. Another .01 difference so I notified that coach as well. First coach argues that his computer did it, sent me his figures down to the 5th decimal point. I again replied it was impossible and explained why. Basically it's a .085 difference for one point at the level we are dealing with. So we have several ties among the top 10. I didn't want my girl getting 8th when she should be tied for 7th. Turns out after the third statement that it was impossible, he re-ran the numbers and discovered the error. His kid dropped to 10th, mine moved into sole position of 7th and in the process, my third along with three others moved into a 5 way tie for 10th.

So that's settled. But a couple of the newer coaches start questioning why we have ties and why we are giving All Start status to 14 kids. We have traditionally only used tiebreakers for the #1 position, the kids get to drop 2 out of 14 targets for All Stars. Or compete in at least 12 matches depending how you look at it. Those that compete in 12 can't drop any, those that compete in 14 can drop 2. All the kids know this going in so we can't change it at the end of the season and why should we. The idea is to reward kids for outstanding performance and if that works out to 14 because of a tie, so be it. We had three tied for first so the tiebreaker came into play for that.

It worked out to be
1st
2nd
2nd
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
8th
10th
10th
10th
10th
10th

This isn't the first year we've had ties, we have ties every year and multiple ties most years. Just not often going over 10 although we had two seasons with 11 in the last 8 years.

phone was dinging almost non-stop for three hours over this.

[CINDERS]

When I was shooting Postal discipline (25yds with .22 prone indoors) 1970 there was a small dot in the middle of the 10 ring these were the .1's so you used a bullet gauge to check the dot was not touched if it was that close, the comps came down to if say a shooter had 100 with 5 dots (100.05) the other guy had a 100 with 4 dots (100.04) then it was the .05 that won.
If they still could not be separated IE if they had the same number of dots in the same order say like 1st shot 3rd shot and so on (Count back) then it had to go to a shoot off the first one to drop a point or say the other guy gets a 10.1 and you hit just a 10 then your toast, I cannot fathom a .085 unless handicaps came into play but usually seasonal averages are off rifle though we run Handicap winner as well.

Well at least the error was sorted sorry for the guys that dropped to 10th but the young lass at sole 7th is good, next year bloke start now..........

[Aragorn243]

Last event of the year was yesterday. The individuals tournament. Top 6 from each team compete for top ten positions. One of my kids finished 2nd with a score of 200 with 2 centers. I was very happy for him. This was his best performance of his career and finally showed some focus on his part. He was also my top shooter for the year but shot mostly 99's all season with a scattering of 100's. He is a junior but may not come back next year due to wanting to concentrate on 3 position shooting which we do not do. My two seniors went from shooting 200's with 2-4 centers the day before to shooting a 197 and 195 which put the one in 14th and the other 20 something. Sophomores did a bit better.