As we explore the roots and geographic locations of the best players per our “Player Rater”, certain patterns have certainly emerged. Almost 75% of the players at the 95th percentile in our player rater are from just 6 states. As expected, California, New York and Illinois are in the forefront of contributors to the top players on rosters. Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Ohio make up the rest of the six teams. One can make the argument that club teams in these states have the volume of players and improved training methods to develop higher end players. The explosion of boys volleyball across all states have been staggering over this past decade. Club program, high school programs, and collegiate volleyball continues to grow its population at a rate higher than any other sport.
The analysis below details the numbers of D3 participants by state. The first column is just a raw enrollment number by state. The “Min Set” category indicates the number of players at D3 that have met the 10 set minimum for the analysis. Our player rater gives a percentile to each player where a % represents your rank compared to other players. The 50% level represents how many players achieved this rating, with the same for the 90% level and the 95% level. The left side analysis is player counts and the right analysis uses percentages to reflect the visualization of the data.
You will see two 95%+ columns to the far right. The first represents what percentage of the D3 players in each state have achieved elite status thus for California and it’s 117 players, 13% of them achieved the elite status. The second represents the overall percentage of the total 121 coming from any individual state. Thus 16% of all the players at the 95%+ category come from California.
What trends do you see in the data? Let us know your thoughts at insidehitter@gmail.com or comment on this post.