SailMichigan Final Collegiate Sailing Rankings for 2011-12

Now that Midwest Collegiate Sailing Association (MCSA) division regattas have concluded for the season, we have evaluated 12 MCSA Spring regattas for school performance rankings. To be included in the final Spring ranking, a college/university must have competed in 25% (3) of the evaluated regattas. Thirteen programs have fullfilled that criteron and their rankings are below. The evaluated regattas for the Spring were: Freshman Ice Beaker, Robert Morris Invitational, Wittenberg Regatta, Big 10 Team Race, Hawkeye Invitational, Buckeye Instersectional, Wet your Willie, MCSA Coed Championship, 3 Division Championship, MCSA Team Race Championship, Oxford Classic Team Race, and the Gopher Invite. Scores were determined as the average of each team's top three performances, with the scores weighted based on the number of schools competing in a given regatta.

Spring Rankings - May 25, 2012



Rank	University	Score
1	University of Wisconsin	13.5
2	University of Michigan	19.9
3	University of Minnesota	20.5
4	Northwestern University	27.5
5	University of Illinois-Chicago	45.6
6	University of Notre Dame	45.8
7	University of Chicago	47.8
8	Michigan State University	55.2
9	Purdue University	60.7
10	Western Michigan University	64.7
11	Marquette University	77.6
12	Ohio State University	94.9
13	Miami University	164.4

Below is a comparison between the Fall and Spring interval rankings, along with an overall ranking for the season. Only teams competing in a minimum of 4 regattas in the Fall and 3 in the Spring were considered for an overall ranking.

University	Fall	Spring	Overall
University of Wisconsin	1	1	1
University of Minnesota	2	3	2
University of Illinois-Chicago	3	5	3
University of Michigan	7	2	4
Northwestern University	6	4	5
University of Notre Dame	5	6	6
Western Michigan University	4	10	7
Michigan State University	8	8	8
University of Chicago	13	7	9
Purdue University	11	9	10
Ohio State University	9	12	11
Marquette University	14	11	12
Miami University	15	13	13
University of Toledo	10	--
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee	12	--
Bowling Green State University	16	--
Michigan Technological University	17	--
Rober Morris University	18	--
Northern Michigan University	19	--
Indiana University	20	--

The dashes in the Spring column reflect that the program competed in less than 3 evaluated Spring regattas and thus was ineligable for inclusion in the rankings. Only teams having completed a minimum of 7 evaluated regattas (Fall (4) /Spring (3)) were given an overall ranking.

So what can we conclude from this inagural attempt at ranking Midwest Collegiate sailing teams? At a minimum it appears that the "Big 10" universities are well-represented in the overall rankings. Because inclusion in the rankings is dependent upon participation, this skewing may reflect the greater resources and student population available at these schools. Greater participation leads to more opportunities for improvement and therefore better performance. Ways to encourage, support greater participation from "MAC" and other division schools would improve the overall performance of the MCSA conference and would possibly enhance the performance of those programs competing nationally. This latter statement is supported by the fact that the University of Wisconsin is the only nationally ranked team from the MCSA.

The most recognized collegiate sailing rankings are produced by Sailing World magazine through an open coaches poll. In addition to their national rankings (which has University of Wisconsin as 13th), they also provided some conference rankings. Their final Spring rankings for the MCSA are as follows:

1. Wisconsin
2. Michigan
3. Minnesota
4. Northwestern
5. Illinois (Chicago)
6. Ohio State
Also receiving votes: Notre Dame

Interestingly, the top 5 programs ranked by Sailing World are exactly the same for the SailMichigan rankings for Spring. Differences occur at position 6 which Sailing World has given to Ohio State and SailMichigan has given to Notre Dame. The concern with the Sailing World system is that it is unclear why the rankings stop at the 6th position and that smaller programs that may not have a dedicated coach, may not be represented at all in the polling process.

Because we view it as a service which enhances the profile of sailing in the state, SailMichigan will continue to provide an unofficial, performance-based assessment of MCSA competing teams for the 2012-13 season. We hope that smaller programs will become more active so that their efforts will be better represented. Please help us by providing any comments or suggestions for our ranking process. Please feel free to review earlier blog posts to better understand our simple system.