The horrors of school statkeepers

As I've said on another thread... a volleyball call-in earlier this year had 71 points and 75 assists....

 

I've had my share:
* From another thread, this year a girls' basketball coach keeps sending in stats sheets that have about 1/4th as many rebounds as there are total shots. The teams will shoot about 25 percent, yet neither will have 30 rebounds and one will usually have less than 20.
* The baseball scorekeeper who gave kids hits instead an error to the opposing fielder because she has the kid in class and likes him.
* Softball or baseball redshirts running the stat compluter at the juco games ("Here, you use this. Don't worry, you'll catch on as the game goes along.").
And so on and so on and so on.

 

Any time a soccer player kicks the ball anywhere within 50 yards of the goal, it's a "shot on goal."

 

Shitfuck. Arnie.
I have a stat guy for a local school who knows everything about soccer. And he insists a team can have 30 shots on goal in a game, even tho the shot on goal doesn't have to be on the goal -- of, and the keeper can make more saves than shots on goal.
For two years, whenever we call bullshit on his stats, we print "Janie Jones was credited with 15 saves." Not a firmer "had". "Was credited."

And please, city baseball and stolen bases is priceless... Catcher's indifference doesn't exist. One coach got pissed about "was credited" because it made his stats look "wrong" and complained to his AD, who called my boss. And my boss walked the AD through it... "Seriously, do you really think your team had 16 stolen bases in a 16-3 loss to Ranked Team? The catcher didn't throw because he knew your batter would strike out..." When my boss explained it to the AD, who watched the next game, he called my boss and apologized...

 

My personal experiences ...

1. A high school baseball team had an abnormal amount of steals. Turns out they would give the kid on the back end of a first-and-third credit for a steal even though when the catcher didn't bother throwing to second ... as would happen most of the time because the league that year had crappy catchers.

2. Same team gave hits for fielder's choices. I called the coach on it and he said his kids would have beat the throw out anyway if the infielder had gone for the play at first.

3. Of course tackles in football are such a source of padding that our paper doesn't take the stat any more. One college coach told me of the tackle stats he gets from one of our local high schools: "if a guy falls down next to the ball carrier, they give him a tackle." For one game, the team turned in stats that credited their players with 40 unassisted tackles. The other team had lost 45-0 and didn't have the ball for that many plays.

4. Then there are the high school football stat-keepers who simply ignore penalties and credit yardage on plays that are nullified. One team about 20 years ago had a kid going for the state record in career rushing. We sent someone to every one of his games to make sure we got the right rushing stats. Told the coach don't bother calling anything in, because we had it. He eventually broke the state record by about 50 yards in the final game. The school newspaper, going by the coaches stats, had him breaking the record with three games to go.

 

We've all had our share of high school scoring adventures but the story I want verified or debunked is the one I always hear about Mississippi Valley having plays where Willie Toten would throw a lateral to Jerry Rice, who'd run with it and Valley would always call it a pass even though it was clearly a lateral.

They say that play was such a bread-and-butter part of the offense, it added something like 50 catches and 1,000 career yards to Rice's receiving total in college.


Back to high schools. I once had a scorekeeper call in a linescore where his team, which was beaten by the 10-run rule in five innings, committed something like 25 errors. So I had to ask about the errors.

He started by saying, and I swear I'm not making this up, "I gave the first error to Billy Bob when he watched a pitch go right down the middle for a strikeout..."

It went downhill from there.

 

I've mentioned this on various other threads, but years ago when we'd staff a game at one of our local high school powers, our stats were always WAY OFF what the team statkeeper compiled. If we had the running back with 140 yards, they'd have him with 185. If we had the QB passing for 80 yards, they'd have him for 150. If we had a punter averaging 36 yards, they'd have him at 49. And so on.

Turns out, their stat guy was crediting the running back for yards to the line of scrimmage after a pitchout, the quarterback with yards from where he threw it (and not from the LOS) and the punter for yards from where he kicked it (and not from the LOS). I would guess this is relatively common, particularly the punting one.

And as for the errors and steals in baseball, don't forget about a batter who reaches on a three-base error getting credited with a triple.

I once got into it with an assistant baseball coach over his stats, which showed a batter who had not walked ALL SEASON having an on-base percentage 100 points higher than his batting average. When I asked about the discrepancy, he replied "those are fielder's choices."

Oy.

 

Some non-Division I schools are almost as bad.

I remember covering one a zillion years ago and they had their star linebacker with five sacks. I went to the player after the game and said, "How many sacks did you have?" He told me he had two. I said "Were there any you were in on that could have been thought of as sacks and he said, "We had six sacks today. I had two, Player W had one, Player X had one, Player Y had one and Player Z had one."

I showed him the stat sheet and he laughed and said, "14 tackles and five sacks? Don't I wish. I had nine tackles and two sacks."

I told the stat guy what the player had said and he said, "Well, he is mistaken."

 

This girl is not a student. She is a graduate who the school asked to remain scorekeeper. She has been around for 4 or 5 years, I think.

 

I don't think I'd ever listen to an archived high school basketball game, or any archived audio feed, for that matter.

 

Any archived audio feed?