Have you ever wondered which Acalanes Varsity sports has the bragging rights for the best team at the school? In order to try to answer that question, I turned to MaxPreps, which bills itself as “America’s source for high school sports”. MaxPreps issues rankings of varsity team using a “complex, unbiased computer algorithm” focused on strength of schedule and results.

Listing the teams in order of ranking would obviously not be the best way to answer this question. Why? Simply stated, the number of schools that participate in each sport varies dramatically. For example, there are 1,457 boys varsity basketball teams vs. 69 girls varsity water polo teams tracked by MaxPreps in California.

Disclaimer: if you don’t like reading articles with math equations (perhaps a first in Booster article history), please stop reading here.

Instead, I calculated the percentile for each team in California using the following formula: 1 – (Acalanes Rank / Total # teams). Although Acalanes is not ranked by MaxPreps in some sports, here are the ones that are tracked: (drumroll, please):

A few things really jumped out at me. First and foremost, clearly I have too much free time on my hands. Second, for all of you that think that your children are overachievers, I think this proves that you are correct because nearly all the teams ranked above average. Third, our girls teams ranked in the 84th percentile on average and the boys ranked in the 78th percentile on average. Lastly, the team that ranked highest, 96th percentile, was girls varsity basketball. Please go out and show your support for them and all the other winter teams as they begin their seasons. Go Dons!