More data

I’ve added more boys data for 2002-2005 seasons (three seasons).  Although not a complete set of games for every team, at least there is some data for all teams, and some of the teams are complete (I think).  Data was gathered from scanned newspapers, WIAA programs, and searchable newspaper archives, which extend back into the end of the period.  This allows calculation and publication of rating numbers for boys for 2002-2005 which I had not previously done.  Some additional and corrected games for girls have been published.  For Greater Spokane League, Bill Pierce provided scores and coaches.  Hopefully I checked these all.  I thought I did.  Maybe I better check again.

More coaches names have been added.  Except for the “golden data” from Bill Pierce for the Greater Spokane League (that data is right, provided I entered it correctly), coaches names are found in various programs, searched articles (particularly the ‘fired/hired’ articles), or mentions of the coach in a scanned newspaper article.  When searching for a coach (search: <coaches name> <school>, but try to be a little more selective than ‘John Smith Jefferson’), one can really start crawling through the web.  A lot of the coaches found are for Puget Sound schools.  There are several searchable newspapers, Seattle Times, Tacoma News Tribune, Kitsap Sun, The Olympian, Everett Herald, Bellingham Herald, lots of minor newspapers.  Fortunately I searched the Seattle Times a while ago before they dumbed down their search engine and lopped off 14 years of searchable content, effectively rendering the search task impossible for their archive.  Coaches names are an afterthought for this project.  A guideline I’ve mostly used is not to publish a coach’s name unless I have evidence that the coach was actually the coach for a particular year.  So if I know the coach for year X and for year X+2, I leave year X+1 blank (mostly).  The site user can fill in.  When an article says thus-and-such has coached here for N years, I usually count back N years and show thus-and-such as the coach.  That is not always the case, as several coaches have left and returned to the same school, newspaper articles aggregating the years without mention of the hiatus.  Sometimes one can figure it out.  Looking back for coaches you come across some pretty interesting cases for coaching replacments: dressing too many girls for a playoff game, not supervising during a water balloon fight on a holiday road trip, smoking marijuana with players, getting arrested, sexting.

As for scores, there are disagreements between sources, even as to the outcome (win/loss).  I have my rules for deciding what to go with.  Every data source has ‘credible errors’, meaning that I don’t just trust the data based on source.  Sometimes the source contradicts itself.

Thanks to Bill Pierce for GSL data, and the WIAA staff for allowing access to their program library.

Starting a blog

Everybody knows what a foul is.  That’s why there is such unanimity among fans, players, coaches, and officials whenever a whistle blows (or does not blow).

foul-1200x803

Here, Waltraute (Marvellee Cariaga) commits a classic reach and grab foul against her sister Brunnhilde (Ute Vinzing), in the second quarter of Gotterdammerung.  Brunnhilde would go on to get a hot hand and torch her former team mates in what would become a real barn-burner by the end.  But that’s not how the officials saw it.  In fact there were no officials actually watching this particular play since it was likely at a dress rehearsal, and the ball wasn’t actually present.  Waltraute is grabbing her sister’s hand which is wearing Alberich’s ring.  Not about basketball at all.  Somebody doctored the photo.

So why Brunnhilde anyway?  I discovered Wagner operas about the time I graduated from high school.  Whenever my young daughters would ask me “Daddy, what should I name my [doll, stuffed animal, pet gerbil, etc.]”, I would invariably say “Brunnhilde.”  Brunnhilde being a very strong and important character in the “greatest work of art conceived by a single person.”  My daughters never accepted my suggestion.  But over the years, Novell fileservers, WebSphere MQ queue managers, numerous windows and linux hosts have all had some form of the Brunnhilde name.

Why TeamBrunnhilde then?  At least in Die Walkure, Brunnhilde and her sisters are high school age, although the opera singers are generally anything but.  The famous music you’ve heard from Die Walkure, featured in numerous commercials and movies, is the beginning of Act III in which the she and her sister Valkyries ride their flying horses carrying fallen heroes up to Valhalla.  They have a lot of fun doing so.  Making jokes about dead dudes they are packing up to see daddy.  They are a team.  Young strong women who have fun, play tough, and kick butt when they need to.  Sounds like the kind of basketball team I’d like to watch.