We don't show this to promote or demote any athlete. Predictions are data only and can be wrong.
About
Course-adjusted ratings for Maine high school cross country: what they are, what they don't do, and where the results come from.
Team ratings, projections and every runner (shown by school and number) are free. Runner names are for coach accounts only.
What this is
Maine high school cross country results with course-adjusted ratings. The problem every coach knows: courses differ in length, hills and footing, so raw times can't be compared across meets and rankings built on raw PRs favor whoever ran the short, fast course. This site fits one number per runner and one number per race from all the results together, so a time is read in the context of the course it was run on.
The full step-by-step, with every formula, adjustment and how well it has done: How the numbers work.
The model, in one line
time = runner_strength + race_difficulty + noise, solved for every runner and every race at once by ridge least squares (the same tool the football rating uses). Runners who raced on several courses tie the courses together. Ratings are reported as the runner's expected time on the season's median course. Teams are compared by a "virtual meet": each school's best 7 rated runners lined up in one race, scored NFHS-style (5 count, sixth and seventh displace, teams with fewer than 5 rated runners removed).
What it does not do
It does not know about injuries, tactics, or who is being rested. A runner with one race gets a provisional number pulled toward the season mean. It is not the MPA's qualifying method (that is finish order at the regional meets: half the 5-runner teams, minimum 4, plus the top 30 individuals). Nothing here is advice.
Sources and credit
Results are transcribed by hand from public meet result files — the HyTek listings that timing companies (Sub 5 Timing, Pine Tree Race Services and others) post, re-published free on athletic.net's Maine cross country hub, plus conference results on the KVAC site — each credited on the race page. No automated collection. Championship dates and classes come from the MPA cross country bulletin.
Athletes
Names, grades, schools and times appear exactly as published in the public result file, and nowhere else: no commentary, no comparisons in prose, no profiles.
Validation
The Validate page fits on races before a cutoff and checks whether the projected team order for later races beat the raw-PR baseline. The site says so when it doesn't.
Version 0.9.22. Built with AI assistance on niftisports.