At 10:31 AM -0600 29/10/02, Rowe, Thomas wrote:
>IOW, its not like recruiting from a long ways off is giving people
>much of an edge.  Not surprisingly, Minnesota is almost at the
>bottom of the list and Alaska at the top - for fairly obvious
>reasons, I think.  But some of the others are - why is Rensselaer so
>high, just as an example?

It looks to me like RPI recruits from Western Canada more than most
Eastern teams. That, along with the Swede, will push their average
distance up.

I find an analysis of leagues of origin to be more indicative of a
team's recruiting radius, since players often play Junior away from
home. In the
West, players will often move great distances to play in a particular league.

RPI tends to recruit the BCHL pretty heavily. Since one of their
coaches is from B.C. (sadly, not 150 Mile House), that makes sense. Another
of their assistants coached at a Prep School in Massachusetts, so
it's no surprise that RPI has 8 Prep Schoolers (counting Shattuck-St.
Mary's).

When we breakdown RPI's roster by league, we find this:
Eastern Prep Schools - 7
British Columbia League - 5
United States League - 4
Alberta League - 2
Saskatchewan League - 2
Central League [Ottawa area] - 1
Ontario Provincial League [Toronto area] - 1
North American League - 1
Eastern League - 1
Sweden - 1
Western Prep Schools - 1

If there is interest (and if it hasn't already been done), I may do an
analysis of players by league of origin.

John

P.S. My spell-checker was obviously designed by an Engineer. It does nothing
if I type RPI, but it marks Rensselaer as incorrect....

--
   John Edwards - Professional Stats Geek - [log in to unmask]
                Laurentian Football - Undefeated since 1973
The opinions expressed are mine alone, because everybody else says I'm weird.