As someone who once played high school sports in Missouri and now have kids who are or were involved, I’ve been in school gyms around town with awards banners hanging on the walls and wondered what schools are the most successful across all sports.
Being also a fan of college sports, I am aware of the “Capital One Cup”(https://www.capitalonecup.com/), which is an award for excellence across all college sports.
What if there was a “Capital One Cup” for Missouri high school sports?
Here is an overview of my implementation of this:
- Sports in the Capital One Cup are categorized as Group A or Group B. Success in Group B earns more points than Group A sports.
- Group B sports are Football, Softball, Girls Volleyball, Basketball, Soccer and Baseball. Points for finishing positions are 60,36,24,18,15,12,9,6,3.
- Group A sports are Tennis, Cross Country, Swimming, Golf, Track & Field, Wrestling and Boys Volleyball (starting 2023-2024). Points for finishing positions are 20,12,10,8,6,5,4,3,2,1
- Sports like Ice Hockey, Field Hockey, Lacrosse, Water Polol are not scored due to the results not being on the MSHSAA website.
- It would be nice to include more sports, however this will give more of an advantage to larger schools that have teams in these sports.
- For a sport to be MSHSAA sanction there needs to be 50 schools fielding teams among the criteria.
- Sports where alternative seasons were played due to COVID-19 are not included since there is no playoff being played.
- A user on Reddit alerted me to the existence of a similar concept in Texas called the “Lone Star Cup” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Star_Cup). This competition includes non-sports activities like music, theater, and academic challenges. MSHSAA activities do include non-sport activities.
- “Scholar Bowl” has been added as a “Coed Activity” which requires the creation of a “Coed Total” score which combines the boys and girls totals plus the “Scholar Bowl” points.
- Just to keep it simple, single-gender schools are listed in the “Coed Activity” tally. Some such schools have had enough points to “contend” in that category.
- Capital One points are often based on finishing or being ranked 1-10. Most high school sports have playoff brackets.
- In playoff brackets points are awarded to quarterfinalists and beyond (“Elite 8”).
- Champs and runner-up get 1st and 2nd place points.
- If there is no third place contest, those points are shared evenly, 3rd and 4th place points are averaged and rounded down. That is 27 points for Group B and 9 for Group A
- Quarterfinal losers will share points of 5th-8th position divided by 4 and rounded down. Group B is 13 points ((18+15+12+9)/4 rounded down) and Group B is 5 points.
- In sports with 1-10 finishing positions ties will be “summed and divided” as well. Ties are denoted in the spreadsheet with a sky blue background on the point totals.
- In 2019-2020, basketball brackets for some classes stopped at semi-finals due to COVID-19. Those points “summed and divided” for semifinalists.
Links to published results:
2023-2024
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRW9jKoHiEuh2tlkKdzXl3g8z8Nbzl-06ecxl9cO81w8Nb5wXl1PBeD-bnZ-tYrhIWWIMndPrbOmNKU/pubhtml
2022-2023
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTQUkcIEFbjsP65szzTnQvtAk9jHl5eQd78CUH0b8T4Uh7pgp3yNAoIjY8g1mdY8RxxQzJhkPxcdKRm/pubhtml
2021-2022
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSTRR6xf58HGEI7OIZtD-6avFaMobdE1xehWuW0Rdp85pfvMhekClhXYr3NXNiRzPDZljbwYu9_u3cR/pubhtml
2020-2021
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vT0BLkTNAmEDErFcDJaGC0GO5vPfDWO33iU_Rd8uspEqmoBdmmVUrbFmQxvBUsAbhNiiHTWvoWmc1W6/pubhtml
2019-2020 (COVID shortened)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTV3xXvurvu5K-auo3CdciJX3OlSPkGco3QXfPnE4LbOxVY2K8L6F5UdxH70IGiugCunPRNx6jdmNeC/pubhtml
2018-2019
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRJHOuUSPceZA09Zd78FNnqVjbbnvTQhRmYXwQDP_8-0zT6kxDl21jJDQZJqpaKY8AEmEnTfqMtWRK8/pubhtml
2017-2018
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQij8v86BuP6CNWixQXtXt9kFfaFEgJhTLU4k8Yy9ZyVqKR3bsO3cOeqLBO3jv8y7hLU4kMvMzRrY1J/pubhtml
2016-2017
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vR-4aJrRc2UY9YN_EL4766w9sf7B99Ye6QsWnnX5tiFmYWbAqItkeEnpNjszgUIl7q0fvRyT9p2pKa6/pubhtml
2015-2016
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQ9lKSYf6IQ9Ic4qvAjHuBWxeK-VF-5-4x_CfvnK2nn8i7IEp3jjnF_eWhc-UPumVm3Scx8wdZmWuRM/pubhtml
2014-2015
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRwwDgussokB4lw9j_LOYSRistkgjn3bwTQwLfk35DOPFZAHELT4W7XG5mlGgMVgFZmg3fzhF5YrYf1/pubhtml
2013-2014
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSL8VL7SF7bP5SETPtETFk3p6NwUwyur9n-FssEHqIweqldM9j5ErlyIkwyswnFRmIjT5q9z5bQvB4-/pubhtml
2012-2013
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSklszOOoBvtPtzPOkC1GRZU2eR97SDL1Y8Dyff-IdioW8aLXDCFGOIfkf4Yj5LmWudiq31czD5m4ZW/pubhtml
2011-2012
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSosDcK_WCeqanOPjMQgKRobsThaPdeN250dOAdbs_fDjvw4V2UkmTohj3Nhz2iqtdUizzQKXCdimAF/pubhtml
2010-2011
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRyJR1D5EsEDVF-s6KgiGUvuvO7WUcoa6xdFPSkoW8WZJYwcjGka-nNNUGe8S9Te6f8cu7Bdo24vR-j/pubhtml
2009-2010
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRwIKynTr8vMLT-rNr9Au8MjKm1r8wb7S1FxxjdcVVTFHeq0wdQFfXfjXV4PE8QBysL1H2mMQ1sQrUe/pubhtml
2008-2009
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQXmkhzOUwR_HfQ6yO1sFDOsiZ3UZzKqSX1r4FK3MdYkRO-XF1aqp21_5tI_t4Wg_LFn7ELxxaFOJ9-/pubhtml
There are also “multi-year aggregate” results that sum totals over the years that show how schools perform well year after year. There are sport-specific breakdown to show how schools have done at a given sport/activity. Currently, schools are sorted by the aggregate performance over the previous five years, however there are columns for the totals for previous ten years and for all years that have been tallied.
Multi-Year Aggregate Results - Boys
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQJK_e1y9oepL0smbQVWw6wFFTOv9UfyyabcjLKCvnwGxNvgZYXFhRURkk_E3pMlqYAkYW1KLeq6uQb/pubhtml
Multi-Year Aggregate Results - Girls
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRKrrctwJWbMmMYQlDSdJTdvNAdQy-yJz_Bhx_erXIQ3v79gK8-vtureYivFdFJGWI4Lt364xbz2-61/pubhtml
Multi-Year Aggregate Results - Coed
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRpkTzA0DasJS988Y_9qK48eIz1k5IacQEmre999FlvGiGVJ61LtMdf0V_Vbf0Cfw5xFRl7-6ACR_HZ/pubhtml
- I haven’t completely decided how to handle combined school teams. Most of which occur with small schools’ football teams. Currently, treating those combined teams and a separate entity if the combination appears multiple times like “Jefferson (Conception) with Southeast Nodeway”.
- Starting in 2023-2024, I did start sharing points between the schools. Going back and retroactively changing prior years is being contemplated.
- Google Sheets QUERY function makes summing the scores from information extracted from MSHSAA.org so much easier provided that schools are given a unique name. Having the same school with slight variations on abbreviations or including or excluding terms like “Academy” can result in errors.
- To make the QUERY easier, apostrophes have been removed from school names. The syntax for queries use single-tick quotes.