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Michigan Legacy Ratings

For some reason, cross country coaches and fans love ratings. They excitedly debate which are the best teams of their conference, the best teams of the decade and the best of all-time. Yet the perfect measuring stick is hard to find. Comparing different teams from different eras is the ultimate in apples-to-oranges comparisons. So much changes from year to year: course conditions, weather, coaches and, of course, the athletes themselves.

In the early 1960s, Birmingham coach Kermit Ambrose had a good run of victories at the state level and he felt that teams that performed well over the course of a decade deserved special recognition. He created the Top Teams of the Decades, a compilation that is still around today. It gave points to programs that placed in the top 10 at the state finals and tallied the points by class/division. Kermit was a dear friend and I wish he were still around so I could get his feedback on the new Legacy Ratings. I’ve created them to create a more accurate and fair method to compare teams across the years.

The Top Teams of the Decades compilations tended to work against teams that move up or down in divisions (the Saugatucks of the world) because their points would be split between two different tallies. Or teams that had great streaks that were split by decades (say 2006-2015); their totals would be cut in half. The most notable fix I wanted to make was to give all teams recognition for making it to the finals. It’s HARD to get a team to the top level, and teams that place outside the top 10 deserve to be ranked.

The Legacy Rating is very simple. Teams get a point for finishing with a score at the finals, and they get a point for every team they beat. So in the typical modern 27-team final, 1st place gets 27 points, last gets 1 point. It is a straightforward reflection of how a team does every year at the finals. Moving up or down in division doesn’t matter. Each year’s score reflects how the team did against similar-sized schools. So the Legacy Ratings are able to show all Lower Peninsula schools on the same list and is the truest measure possible of a school’s dominance in MHSAA final competition.

We present two versions here: all-time (1922-2019) and 21st Century (2000-2019). The word “legacy” is key because the all-time listing, for instance, reflects the entire history of the school’s cross country program at the finals. The structure of the ratings makes comparison across the many generations much more fair. For instance, there are schools that scored “easy” wins back in the 1940s, when sometimes only two teams would show up for a Class B final. The winning team only gets 2 points in those cases. A modern win (27ish) points is much more valuable. Thus it’s also a reflection of the scale of participation in cross country in this state and how it has grown.

Like any rating, these are just for fun. My hope is that these Legacy Ratings also give credit to the schools that over the decades have also put a priority on cross country, even though coaches change and times change.

The Top XC Teams of All-Time - Boys

The Top XC Teams of All-Time - Girls

The Top XC Teams of the 21st Century - Boys

The Top XC Teams of the 21st Century - Boys

The top 100 rankings for all-time and the 21st Century are published in XC! High School Cross Country In Michigan -- that essential book also includes Legacy scoring for every team that has EVER competed in the Lower Peninsula Finals since 1922.

The Old: Top Teams of the Decades

Originally compiled by Kermit Ambrose and Duane Raffin, these pages keep track of the most dominant teams in our sport based on how often (and how high) they finished in the top 10 at the state finals. Scoring is 10pts for 1st, 9 for 2nd, etc. It's not a perfect measure (for instance, it doesn't adequately reflect the power of top teams that are forced to switch divisions in mid-decade), nor teams whose peak straddled the line between two different decades. For what it's worth, here they are through 2018:

Boys & Girls 1960s, '70s, '80s, & '90s

Boys 2000s

Girls 2000s

Boys 2010s

Girls 2010s