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Team Points

For Block Letters, Emblems, & Certificates

Athletes are awarded points to earn towards a block letter and sports emblems

 which they can put on a Letterman Jacket if they so choose to purchase one.

Coach Garza as a student-athlete at Wilcox, didn’t fully understand how team points worked, and they were never clearly explained. He only recalls hearing bits and pieces about how they were calculated and how they worked. Now, as head coach, he has found that most athletes face the same confusion. With questions about team points frequently arising during awards nights, the goal of this page is to provide clarity with the following explanation.

 

How points “work”:

  1. Points add up by sport. They do not add up between sports.

  2. A block letter is awarded at your first 100 points.

    • This is the first 100 points regardless of sport. 

    • You only get one block letter.

  3. Each emblem is earned at 100 points.

    • You only have 4 years of high school sports eligibility so you can only earn up to 4 emblems per sport.

    • In theory, this means for most intents and purposes the maximum number of emblems an athlete can earn are 16.

      • However, if an athlete is allowed by two head coaches to do 2 sports concurrently in a single season this number could theoretically be higher. It is just highly improbable since most athletes only earn 3 emblems per sport they do for all 4 years. Further, most athletes are not multisport athletes, and to exceed 16 emblems the student-athlete would need to do more than 3 sports.


First a few disclaimers:
It is the head coach’s discretion to award points as they see fit as long as they adhere to the school-provided guidelines. 


Please note that if you participate in other sports where Coach Garza is not the head coach, the head coach for that sport may not incorporate additional variables into their calculations or have a clear and repeatable methodology for how they derate player points. Coach Garza and formerly Coach VanZant, derate player points to fairly account for more variables than those captured by the school's guidelines. In our opinion, it is not fair to give an athlete who did compete at every race and attended every practice session the same number of points as someone who only ran one or two races or had very poor attendance.

If you are an alumnus reading this, please know that the explanation below only provides an example of Coach VanZant’s player points calculation's general methodology. However, Coach Garza was never supplied with Coach VanZant’s calculation or the weights/thresholds used for each variable that plays a role in the calculation. The only aspect that carried over from Coach VanZant to Coach Garza was the variables considered in the calculation and the general idea.

The school provided guidelines:

  • The maximum number of points a Varsity player can be awarded for being a player on the team is 100 points.

  • The maximum number of points a Junior Varsity player can be awarded for being a player on the team is 60 points.

  • Athletes who are team Captains are awarded an additional 20 points.

  • Athletes who earn the designation of “All League” are awarded an additional 20 points.

  • Athletes that are a part of the division & team to earn the title of League Champions, are awarded an additional 20 points.

  • The total points an athlete is awarded in a season is the sum of the player points and any additional points applicable based on titles earned by said athlete.


 

The variables Coach Garza takes into account to derate the maximum number of player points:

  • Team status (On / off the team)

  • Attendance (%)

  • Varsity Ratio (% of races run as Varsity)

  • % of Races Competed (Excluding invitationals w/ the exceptions below)

    • Firebird Invitational

    • Lynbrook Center Meet

    • Lynbrook Invitational

 

How Coach Garza derates player points

  1. If the athlete is off the team they get 0 points

  2. If the athlete ran more than 70% of races as Varsity they are deemed to have a 100-point maximum for player points. Otherwise, they have a 60-point maximum.

  3. Derate from point maximum for the athlete begins

    1. Player point maximum is derated by % of races competed
      (this weighs 56% accounting for compounding)

    2. The resulting points are further derated by the % attendance for the athlete
      (this weighs 44% accounting for compounding).

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