Confusion Present in OSAA Rankings

For the Oregon Schools Activities Association (OSAA), the manner in which rankings are constructed apply differently than professional leagues such as the MLB and NFL. Wins and losses are not of paramount importance and a team’s victories inside their conference are hardly even considered. As a result, students uncover their school’s ranking while being left in the dark on how that ranking came to be.

The system OSAA uses to rank its schools is “a combination of a Rating Percentage Index (RPI) system and the Colley Bias Free Rating Method (Colley)” (From OSAA). At first glance, who in the world is going to clarify its existence? I dare anyone to define those systems of ranking precisely without using Google Chrome as a reference. Which is why there will be no definitions present in this article. Meanwhile, anyone with the slightest amount of sports knowledge will know what a win and a loss is and relate to how superb or poor a school’s certain sports team is.

Last year in the final 5A Baseball Rankings, Pendleton (18-9) was ranked higher than Churchill (22-8), Sandy (21-8) who is now in 6A, Corvallis (20-9), and Bend (20-7). Yet Wilsonville (18-10) is still ranked lower than the latter four teams mentioned (From OSAA). Ben McClelland, a sophomore at Wilsonville High School, was asked how this absurdity came to be. “A small differences in each team’s should correlate to a large disparity in the rankings”. Both Wilsonville and Pendleton had the same amount of wins and Wilsonville had only ONE loss more than Pendleton. What gives Pendleton the right to be ranked five places higher than Wilsonville instead of just one? It’s thoroughly speechless.

Now, sports know that wins and losses should not be the only factor for deciding the quality of a school’s sports team. “I think that it should be based on the skill level of the team, and if they are bad during the beginning of the season, it should not their skill level at the end of the season,” said Brent Voss, another sophomore at Wilsonville High School. There should be some reward for how competitive a team places and how competitive a team’s schedule is. The result on the box score does not always resemble the performance of a team for that game.

However, there is no reason as to why a team’s record to be so bluntly discarded to make room for other preferred statistics that only individuals in that profession will pay attention to. Wins and losses may not be everything, but they show a team’s ability to produce in dominating fashion and in nail-biting affairs. Ultimately, they separate inconsistent pretenders from championship-hungry contenders.