Top Girls Fastpitch Softball States - were would your State be Rank?

[TheSoftballZone]

College Football Ranking came out Tuesday evening. So after reading amother thread about rankings on the forum I decided to ask a different question.

If you had to Rank your State on 3 key points in the game of Girls Fastpitch Softball how would your State rank compare with other states if you was picking the top 25 states in girls fastpitch softball. My top 25 is listed below

Key Points for Ranking

1.) Strength of competition in your state.
2.) Team Count
3.) How many Players advance to play at division 1 level.

Based on them 3 key points how would your state rank?

 

[TheSoftballZone]

My Top 25 ranking

1.) California
2.) Arizona
3.) Nevada
4.) Texas
5.) Florida
6.) Louisiana
7.) Oklahoma
8.) Ohio * I'm from Ohio
9.) New Mexico
10.) Missouri
11.) Illinois
12.) Tennessee
13.) Georgia
14.) Alabama
15.) New Jersey
16.) Pennsylvania
17.) Wisconsin
18.) New York
19.) Indiana
20.) South Carolina
21.) Oregon
22.) Maryland
23.) Michigan
24.) Virginia
25.) West Virginia

 

[TheSoftballZone]

I'm sure some will disagree with my Top 25 and I even believe a few could move up or down.

 

[coachjwb]

25 is too many, Ricky! I will go 12 ... though I admittedly don't know nearly enough about many of the states. Just curious, as to why you picked Nevada 3rd?

1) California
2) Texas
3) Florida
4) Georgia
5) Tennessee
6) Ohio
7) Arizona
8) Alabama
9) Oklahoma
10) Illinois
11) Indiana
12) Virginia

 

[TheSoftballZone]

Not to pick on you Jeff or your Rankings, but Nevada and Arizona plays teams from California almost every weekend. When I did my top 25, I look at region the teams played in as well. Yes 25 states is a lot but someone had to be first.

 

[CARDS]

Top 25 states for fastpitch softball
1. Ca
2. Fl
3. Tx
4. Ga
5. Tn
6. Ok
7. Al
8. Or
9. Az
10. Ill
11 VA
12. MI
13. IN
14. OH
15. Pa
16. Co
16. Ks
17. Mo
18. NJ
19. Wa
20. Sc
21. Nc
22. Wv
23. UT
24. LA
25. MS

 

[TheSoftballZone]

CARDS, I like your pick but Michigan ahead of Ohio?

 

[CARDS]

It was tough... Ohio has the Racers, several top travel programs, Stingrays tournament and great HS ball... But Michigan softballl at the travel level has been pretty tough, Compuware and several other national events. At the college level a little stronger than Ohio...

Ohio is good with some great players and teams...Ohios best can compete with the best the world has to offer...

 

[TheSoftballZone]

Now I feel bad for putting them at 23, but hey Jeff didn't even have them o his list. Still a nice top 25 list.

 

[Practice?]

The following link is from 2015. Found this On a post from last year.
Looks like Ohio comes in at #10 for power five conferences players.
http://fastpitchanalytics.com/2015/...-of-the-power-five-conferences-ncaa-softball/

 

[coachjwb]

Practice .... good data. And it does change my viewpoint some ... if you look at # of power 5 players per million of population ... it looks something like this in round numbers ... (Okiedad will be happy!) ...

OK - 8
CA - 7
KS - 7
AZ - 6
AL - 5
GA - 5
IL - 5
TX - 4
IN - 3.5
NJ - 3.5
FL - 3
WA - 3
VA - 3
NC - 2
OH - 2
PA - 1.5

That is only one stat ... only looking at power 5 conferences ... but for what it's worth ...

 

[Run26]

It was tough... Ohio has the Racers, several top travel programs, Stingrays tournament and great HS ball... But Michigan softballl at the travel level has been pretty tough, Compuware and several other national events. At the college level a little stronger than Ohio...

Ohio is good with some great players and teams...Ohios best can compete with the best the world has to offer...

CARDS,

I've read all of your posts on this topic and while I do agree with some of it - you appear to be stuck in the 2011/2012 era. Yes, IL, MI and IN are hotbeds but Ohio has gained serious ground on these states and IMO, passed them. Compuware is so 5 years ago and Ohio won it so many times that they even blocked Ohio Classics and Doom from return visits. I remember Ohio Classics Black won that tournament like 4 straight years.

While IN has Dreams, Prospects and Magic - I think Ohio's top 3 would beat them HTH. Dreams isn't what they used to be and neither is Magic.

IL, - Southern Force was just that. Tough and extremely talented but they were not a roster built strictly on IL girls. I realize this isn't a requirement for this exercise but SF was built from at least a tri-state area when they won ASA Nationals.

Ricky - No way is NV even close to a top 10 team. Lil' Rebels are strong but that's about it. Sorry bud.........had to ding you on that one

 

[TheSoftballZone]

Run26 that's fine and now that I look it over more I believe my top 25 may not be supported by data but more on my take of the rankings. I may redo my list once I have time to research into more details. Once you put D1 players on the state rankings its a game changers.

 

[coachjwb]

This would be a good one to get Coach Joe's viewpoints on ... with having coached out west and in this region of the country, and all of his recruiting at showcases and such ...

 

[JoeA1010]

I'll take population into account in my rankings. In other words, a small state can be better than a larger state, yet with fewer good players. And this is just my sense of it. Once you get past the top 15 or so, I'm mostly guessing.

1. California
2. Florida
3. Texas
4. Georgia
5. Tennessee
6. Oklahoma
7. Louisiana
8. Alabama
9. Arizona
10. Oregon
11. Washington
12. Illinois
13. Ohio
14. Missouri
15. Indiana
16. North Carolina
17. Virginia
18. Idaho
19. Pennsylvania
20. South Carolina
21. Mississippi
22. Michigan
23. Arkansas
24. Kansas
25. Colorado

 

[manitoudan]

Without taking population into the equation what would your list look like Joe ? I'd guess Tn , La , Ok , Wash and Oregon all fall quite a bit ?

 

[TheSoftballZone]

I'll take population into account in my rankings. In other words, a small state can be better than a larger state, yet with fewer good players. And this is just my sense of it. Once you get past the top 15 or so, I'm mostly guessing.

1. California
2. Florida
3. Texas
4. Georgia
5. Tennessee
6. Oklahoma
7. Louisiana
8. Alabama
9. Arizona
10. Oregon
11. Washington
12. Illinois
13. Ohio
14. Missouri
15. Indiana
16. North Carolina
17. Virginia
18. Idaho
19. Pennsylvania
20. South Carolina
21. Mississippi
22. Michigan
23. Arkansas
24. Kansas
25. Colorado

I really like Joe top 25 State pick..

 

[coachjwb]

I may not have a good sample size, but since I started doing my wristband systems, I have probably talked to at least 30-40 high school coaches in Ohio, and at least another 20-30 in other states including California, Illinois, Washington, Missouri, Texas, etc. I always ask them if they have a JV team since they could use the same system for both, and I would estimate that 70% of the Ohio coaches said they did, and only 30% of the out-of-state coaches did. I remember specifically at least 2 California coaches who did not have JV programs which surprised me. And I definitely know a lot of young ladies who played JV ball in high school here in Ohio who eventually played in college. To the point of my original post in the other thread (before Ricky hijacked it ), I just think it says something about the strength and popularity of the sport in Ohio.

 

[JoeA1010]

Without taking population into the equation what would your list look like Joe ? I'd guess Tn , La , Ok , Wash and Oregon all fall quite a bit ?

Yeah, just going on pure numbers, Illinois, Ohio and Missouri all move up several spots and Louisiana, Oregon, Washington (only a little here) and certainly Idaho all fall a bunch of spots. It's amazing how much better Ohio has become since I got back this way in 2011. It's nothing now to see Ohio girls going to the SEC, whereas any Ohio girl going to a Power 5 conference just 5-10 years ago was a huge deal. I see Ohio girls regularly going to top tournaments across the country now, which almost never happened as recently as 2010.

 

[SoCal_Dad]

Someone on UCS looked up the rosters of top 25 teams and then excluded players with little playing time - http://robocoach.websitetoolbox.com/post/composition-of-top-25-di-teams-8053719?pid=1291751289

I made a list of "Key Players", those that had at least 30 at bats and at least 40 innings pitched. Also, some key players are injured or for some reason aren't playing this year, so I added them as well. The only ones are Kasey Fagan, Danica Mercado, and Tori Finucane.

There were 337 players total on the 27 teams that were "key players".

California- 110 (32.6%)
Texas-33 (9.8%)
Florida- 26 (7.7%)
Georgia- 18 (5.3%)
Alabama- 13 (3.9%)
Missouri- 11 (3.3%)
Louisiana, Kansas, and Minnesota- 9 (2.7%)
South Carolina, Arizona, Illinois, Mississippi, and Virginia- 8 (2.4%)
Oregon and Washington- 5 (1.5%)
Tennessee, Nebraska, Hawaii- 4 (1.2%)
Oklahoma, Ohio, New Mexico, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey- 3 (0.8%)
Iowa, Indiana, North Carolina, Maryland, New York- 2 (0.5%)
Idaho, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Canada, and Australia- 1 (0.3%)