USATF Olympic Trials and NCAA Conference Affiliation

Submitted by justingoblue on

The US Olympic Track and Field team will be officially set tomorrow evening, and with the vast majority of teams set, I thought I would take a look at schools and conferences about to be represented in London. My initial hypothesis was that the Pac 12 would run away (lol) with the race for top conference, and this was definitely the case. With the teams set as of this morning, 25/84 athletes competed at Pac schools, for a 29.76% share. The specific schools within the Pac were surprising, with Oregon putting the most men (4) and most overall (5), and Stanford only sending one woman, I went into this believing UCLA and Stanford would be the best represented schools.

In on-topic, MGoBlog news, Michigan has sent two athletes, Jeff Porter qualified for the 110m Hurdles, and Geena Gall made the women's 800m Run team. The Big Ten sent three men (T4) and four women (T2).

Now a diary isn't a diary without Chart? Charts, and I need to explain what you're looking at. I broke down the trials by event, with a separate chart for men and women. The schools of athletes are posted in order of finish, with names posted for schools in the Pac 12, Big Ten, SEC, BXII, Ivy League (men only), ACC and Big East (both women only). Everyone else is represented with an "EE" designation. For further information, I will post the schools and events qualified on the other side of the charts.

Women's data:

Women        
100m EE Tennessee TAMU USC
200m USC EE Texas  
400m Texas Tennessee EE  
800m Cal  Michigan UNC  
1500m        
3000m S Colorado PSU Colorado  
5000m Rutgers ND EE  
10000m ASU UNC Iowa State  
100m H UCLA EE LSU  
400m H        
20000m W    
High Jump    
Pole Vault EE Oregon FSU  
Long Jump UCLA Arizona GT  
Triple Jump EE      
Shotput Stanford Texas    
Discus Illinois UW EE  
Hammer UNLV EE UCLA  
Heptathlon Georgia EE Nebraska  
Conference
Pac 12 13
BXII 4
Big Ten 4
ACC 4
BE 2
EE 10

Men's data:

Men      
100m Tennessee Arkansas EE
200m      
400m EE Florida USC
800m EE EE USC
1500m      
3000m S Wisconsin Princeton ASU
5000m Oregon WSU EE
10000m Oregon Wisconsin Colorado
110m H Tennessee S. Carolina Michigan
400m H      
20000m W EE    
High Jump EE KSU Arizona
Pole Vault UW Arkansas EE
Long Jump Texas Florida EE
Triple Jump Florida Florida  
Shotput Georgia ASU Missouri
Discus EE EE Texas Tech
Hammer EE EE  
Javelin Brown Dartmouth Oregon
Decathlon Oregon Texas  
Conference
Pac 12 12
SEC 10
BXII 5
Ivy League 3
Big Ten 3
EE 14
Top Men's Schools
Oregon 4
Florida 4

WIsconsin, Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas and Arizona State sent two male athletes. No school sent more than two women, with Tennessee, Texas, USC, Colorado, UCLA, UNC, Cal-State Dominguez and Hampton University each getting two.

The women's everyone else category included athletes from: Cal-State Dominguez, Hampton University, UC Davis, Roberts Wesleyan College, NDSU, Cal-Poly SLO, UNLV, Coastal Carolina.

The men's everyone else category included athletes who competed for: Community College Only, Clemson, Eastern Carolina, Willamette, Cal-State Los Angeles, Northern Arizona, Colorado College, South Dakota, Milliken University, Boise State, Ashland University, Morningside College.

For some closing notes...

  • There were a ton of men who transferred from community colleges, although only one did not enroll at a four year institution. There were a couple transfers out of BCS conference schools (mostly out of Tennessee, oddly).
  • Marquise Goodwin, the Texas WR, took the top long jump spot.
  • Schools were counted by their conference affiliation for 2011-2012, i.e. Missouri is BXII, Nebraska is Big Ten.

Hope this is at least mildly amusing/informative for Sunday morning reading. I plan to update when the entire field is set, but the numbers shouldn't change significantly, as the majority of finalists in remaining events hail from Pac schools (and few events remain).

Comments

M-Wolverine

July 1st, 2012 at 6:39 PM ^

But without tracing every athlete in every sport, is there a way to tie in former Michigan athletes, and/or Michigan athletes for other countries?

justingoblue

July 1st, 2012 at 7:36 PM ^

other than the list you linked to on MGoBlue, I don't know. Depending on how bored/busy I am this week I thought about doing the same comparison with the US swimming events, or maybe the US team sports, but trying to do this for every country just isn't feasible (language barriers, different levels of information released, tons of countries, ect).

As far as taking a look by conference, I did enjoy seeing this come together. The nice part about swimming and track, of course, is the number and variety of events. Hard to know anything about the level of world-class basketball players in a conference when the SEC gets one roster spot and so does the Big Ten, but there are going to be ~100 athletes when I update later tonight, which is enough to extrapolate some conclusions, IMO.

MGoShoe

July 2nd, 2012 at 12:06 PM ^

...who will compete for other countries:

  • Nicole (Edwards) Sifuentes (2005-08), Canada, 1,500m
  • Nate Brannen (2002-05), Canada, 1,500m
  • Tiffany (Ofili) Porter (2008-11) [married to Jeff Porter], Great Britain, 100m hurdles

MGoShoe

July 3rd, 2012 at 10:18 AM ^

...athletes and coaches who are 2012 Olympians (all sports, all countries). Currently there are 19 athletes and 6 coaches.

Add Nick Wills (2004-08), New Zealand, 1,500m to the list of U-M T&F athletes competing for other countries.

MGoShoe

July 3rd, 2012 at 2:31 PM ^

...with them. Josh Asselin is on that team, however.

According to this Wikipedia article, the Dominican Republic is participating in the FIBA World Olympic Qualifying Tournament. The tournament began yesterday and today, the Domincan Republic defeated South Korea 95-85. Jon's brother Al Horford scored 30 pts and Asselin had 7 pts and 3 boards in 11 min of action.

linconsenn

July 20th, 2012 at 7:54 AM ^

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