I’m the data geek who posted earlier using the AES rankings. I used ChatGPT to offer me an unbiased opinion of which data we should be using to evaluate clubs.

Great question. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer about whether the SportsEngine AES Power Rankings or the USA Volleyball National Rankings (sometimes shortened as USAV National Rankings) is the “better” gauge for a volleyball team — it depends on context. What I can do is compare how each is calculated, their strengths/weaknesses, and then help you decide which is more useful for your particular situation (club level, recruiting, benchmarking, etc.).

⸻

How each ranking works

SportsEngine AES Power Rankings
• This is the ranking engine built into the SportsEngine AES platform (used for tournament scheduling, seeding, rankings, etc.). 
• The methodology is described as “incorporating years of data collected over hundreds of tournaments from coast to coast … uses algorithms specific to volleyball to rank teams by several variables.” 
• For regional vs national: regional rankings only include matches with other teams in that region; national rankings include all matches and all teams in the respective age group. 
• Essentially, if a club/region uses the AES ranking system it can show how a team stacks up in its region and across the country (depending on data).
• Note: Because it depends on the events that feed into the AES system, if a club doesn’t play many AES-scored tournaments or the data is incomplete, the ranking may underrepresent strength.

USA Volleyball National Rankings
• This is the official ranking system by USA Volleyball for junior club teams. 
• It is based on results from USA Volleyball-sanctioned events (indoor clubs) and uses “a multitude of algorithms to objectively rank teams.” 
• For results to be included, teams must have a USA Volleyball team code and they must have competed in USA Volleyball-sanctioned events. 
• The idea is that clubs and teams can see how they compare nationally across the entire country (within their age group).
• Because this is the “official” national ranking system for USA Volleyball, it carries strong weight in many circles.

⸻

Strengths & limitations of each

AES Power Rankings: Strengths
• Potentially very granular and incorporating many tournaments, especially if a club participates often in AES-scored events.
• Useful for region-to-region comparisons, seeding for tournaments, and giving a “snapshot” of relative standing in the AES world.
• For regions/clubs that rely heavily on AES tournaments, the representation may be strong.

AES Power Rankings: Limitations
• Because the ranking is only as good as the underlying data (how many tournaments/events, how many teams played, tournament quality etc.), a team may look worse or better depending on participation rather than purely performance.
• Regional events may dominate the data; if a team hasn’t travelled or played widely, its ranking may not reflect its strength vs national competition.
• Absence of full transparency (publicly detailed methodology may be less known) means interpretation requires caution.

USA Volleyball National Rankings: Strengths
• Focused on sanctioned national-level events: hence the competition tends to be more consistent, possibly more comparable across clubs.
• Because it is the “official” national ranking system, it may be better aligned with national tournament seeding, college recruiting visibility, etc.
• Offers a “national baseline” for clubs to benchmark themselves across the country, not just regionally.
• Since the launch was fairly recent (2023 announcement) it is evolving but likely to gain prominence. 

USA Volleyball National Rankings: Limitations
• If a club/team does not compete in USA Volleyball-sanctioned events (or at least not many), it may be under-represented.
• Because the algorithm is “multitude of algorithms” and may emphasize head-to-head, strength of opponent, etc., teams new to major nationals may be disadvantaged.
• As with any ranking, it’s still a number; it cannot capture intangible factors (team chemistry, late season improvement, injuries, etc.).

⸻

Which is a better gauge for your use case?

Given your context, here’s how I’d advise:
• If you’re looking at how a team compares nationally, especially for recruiting, benchmarking, or who to play/travel with — the USA Volleyball National Rankings likely offer a stronger benchmark because they are designed for the “national” view.
• If you’re looking at how a team compares within a region, how they might seed into regionals/tournaments, and the club participates in many AES events, then the AES Power Rankings provide value.
• If you are advising a club: check both rankings. A team that is strong Regionally (high AES ranking) but low nationally (USA Volleyball) may need better national exposure/travel. Conversely, if a team is strong nationally (USA Volleyball) but doesn’t appear high on AES in its region, it might indicate regional dominance with fewer events or less competition locally.

⸻

Practical recommendation
• For your purposes, I suggest using USA Volleyball National Rankings as the primary gauge for how a team stands on the national stage, and also monitor AES Power Rankings as a secondary gauge for regional strength and tournament readiness.
• Also, look beyond the rankings: match results, strength of schedule, tournament placements, recent improvement — a ranking is only part of the story.
• If a particular club/team is targeting college recruiting or national-level tournaments, emphasize their USA Volleyball ranking (and use it in communications). If the club is striving for regional dominance and tournament seeding, use AES as a lever.

Anonymous wrote:You guys every club is having additional makeups. They are all hoping a 6’3” middle wunderkid walks in after relocating to the US from Czech Republic since last year, who happened to be sick all weekend. Lol.

+1

And making it a money grab in the process

You guys every club is having additional makeups. They are all hoping a 6’3” middle wunderkid walks in after relocating to the US from Czech Republic since last year, who happened to be sick all weekend. Lol.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Metro has just added new makeup tryout dates across age groups and regions - in case you are still looking for a club.

Is this the Metro PR person?

I think so. Someone who just wanted to provide information would have posted this on an existing thread. They wanted another Metro thread, where only Metro is discussed.

You guys are so strange! What's wrong with starting a new thread about Metro posting new tryouts when it's Tuesday and everyone is posting about how stressful the wait is to see if more offers come in? It's useful info no matter what club someone starts a new thread about in this moment, so how weird to see it as paid/staff PR...

Of course it is PR - someone wanted another Metro thread. Everybody is posting the makeup tryouts for all the other clubs on the same thread (tryouts in real time), but Metro had to be special and get its own thread. Then act surprised when the poster gets called out. Just imagine the mess if every club would send someone to post their own tryouts on different threads.

You can’t win on here. When a robust “discussion” about Metro and/or Paramount breaks out on a thread intended to be broader than that, people complain that every thread turns into a debate about Metro vs Paramount. Meanwhile, if someone creates a thread to discuss a Metro-specific issue, it must be someone from the club trying to get more attention.

Which is it? Do we want to avoid talking about Metro on general threads and limit the Metro debates to certain threads or do we want to limit the number of Metro threads and risk a more general thread becoming yet another Metro fight?

How thoughtful of you! You didn't want to turn the thread into a Metro vs Paramount thread. Now I get it. Sarcasm aside, I doubt that announcing the Metro tryouts in an existing thread would have turned that thread into a Metro vs Paramount discussion. The arguments start when the discussion is about Metro Travel - and Metro Travel didn't have to reschedule their tryouts. But nice try to explain away why Metro deserves their own tryouts thread.

I think you underestimate the power of anonymous strangers on the interwebs.

This thread has already taken a left turn into whether Metro Central teams are good or not. I’m genuinely surprised no one has opined that the fact that Metro says they are still looking for players for the new 17 National team must mean that the new National teams will be bad.

17 is a bad age - most players realize that playing club takes too much of their time and volleyball doesn't take them anywhere anyway. Most of them play up to 16 hoping that they would make Varsity. It is likely that the only players left in club volleyball by 17 are the HS Varsity players. We are sitting on an offer right now, waiting for an offer from our choice club (which may or may not come). While waiting, we keep wondering if all this (so much money, so much useless travel) is making any sense - we are seriously considering quitting club volleyball (and we are at an even earlier age than 17). We can see the writing on the wall (there is no way that our DD will make Varsity).

Well, it’s not a promising start right?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Metro has just added new makeup tryout dates across age groups and regions - in case you are still looking for a club.

Is this the Metro PR person?

I think so. Someone who just wanted to provide information would have posted this on an existing thread. They wanted another Metro thread, where only Metro is discussed.

You guys are so strange! What's wrong with starting a new thread about Metro posting new tryouts when it's Tuesday and everyone is posting about how stressful the wait is to see if more offers come in? It's useful info no matter what club someone starts a new thread about in this moment, so how weird to see it as paid/staff PR...

Of course it is PR - someone wanted another Metro thread. Everybody is posting the makeup tryouts for all the other clubs on the same thread (tryouts in real time), but Metro had to be special and get its own thread. Then act surprised when the poster gets called out. Just imagine the mess if every club would send someone to post their own tryouts on different threads.

You can’t win on here. When a robust “discussion” about Metro and/or Paramount breaks out on a thread intended to be broader than that, people complain that every thread turns into a debate about Metro vs Paramount. Meanwhile, if someone creates a thread to discuss a Metro-specific issue, it must be someone from the club trying to get more attention.

Which is it? Do we want to avoid talking about Metro on general threads and limit the Metro debates to certain threads or do we want to limit the number of Metro threads and risk a more general thread becoming yet another Metro fight?

How thoughtful of you! You didn't want to turn the thread into a Metro vs Paramount thread. Now I get it. Sarcasm aside, I doubt that announcing the Metro tryouts in an existing thread would have turned that thread into a Metro vs Paramount discussion. The arguments start when the discussion is about Metro Travel - and Metro Travel didn't have to reschedule their tryouts. But nice try to explain away why Metro deserves their own tryouts thread.

I think you underestimate the power of anonymous strangers on the interwebs.

This thread has already taken a left turn into whether Metro Central teams are good or not. I’m genuinely surprised no one has opined that the fact that Metro says they are still looking for players for the new 17 National team must mean that the new National teams will be bad.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Metro has just added new makeup tryout dates across age groups and regions - in case you are still looking for a club.

Is this the Metro PR person?

I think so. Someone who just wanted to provide information would have posted this on an existing thread. They wanted another Metro thread, where only Metro is discussed.

You guys are so strange! What's wrong with starting a new thread about Metro posting new tryouts when it's Tuesday and everyone is posting about how stressful the wait is to see if more offers come in? It's useful info no matter what club someone starts a new thread about in this moment, so how weird to see it as paid/staff PR...

Of course it is PR - someone wanted another Metro thread. Everybody is posting the makeup tryouts for all the other clubs on the same thread (tryouts in real time), but Metro had to be special and get its own thread. Then act surprised when the poster gets called out. Just imagine the mess if every club would send someone to post their own tryouts on different threads.

You can’t win on here. When a robust “discussion” about Metro and/or Paramount breaks out on a thread intended to be broader than that, people complain that every thread turns into a debate about Metro vs Paramount. Meanwhile, if someone creates a thread to discuss a Metro-specific issue, it must be someone from the club trying to get more attention.

Which is it? Do we want to avoid talking about Metro on general threads and limit the Metro debates to certain threads or do we want to limit the number of Metro threads and risk a more general thread becoming yet another Metro fight?

How thoughtful of you! You didn't want to turn the thread into a Metro vs Paramount thread. Now I get it. Sarcasm aside, I doubt that announcing the Metro tryouts in an existing thread would have turned that thread into a Metro vs Paramount discussion. The arguments start when the discussion is about Metro Travel - and Metro Travel didn't have to reschedule their tryouts. But nice try to explain away why Metro deserves their own tryouts thread.

Anonymous wrote:I'm newer to this chicken fight. Who is losing talent to Metro Central that wants to fight this fight so badly? They are clearly a middle of the road if even team based on the data, so it can't be one of the better teams losing talent to a mid-to-meh level regional Central squad.

Just chiming in to say… I’m also new to this volleyball chicken fight but not new to DCUM and wow… this forum is brutal

Anonymous wrote:Where are national rankings showing up for you? They look blank to me on sportsengine but maybe I am searching wrong.

You see national rankings by checking the “Show National Ranks” checkbox. It only becomes available when you choose the region you’re looking at. Also, make sure you choose the season. There aren’t any rankings for 2025-26 yet.

Where are national rankings showing up for you? They look blank to me on sportsengine but maybe I am searching wrong.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:The Metro regional teams are actually pretty good if you look at AES rankings. Metro North and Metro East frequently rank ahead of other travel teams in the region.

Metro North has historically been the second best Metro team after Travel. Their location plus history has allowed them to attract good players.

East has been extremely variable, sometimes good but just as often at the bottom of the Metro teams and the lower third of the region.

South PW and South FX are similar to East but with even more variability across ages and a lower level of performance when they do well.

Central is historically the worst region in terms of performance. They usually take players that are receiving low level offers from other clubs or no offers at all.

Generally, no one would consider the Metro regionals expect North close to the performance of other travel teams, unless you count the clubs that travel when they really shouldn’t.

What are regional ranks?

Regional ranks only take into account your performance against other teams in the region, and ignore results from any other matches played against non regional teams. Also, I believe they also ignore any matches played against teams at a lower or higher age group.



WOW is that some serious MISinformation! Please, share your source for this? We have a family member who's coached metro regional teams in last 5 years, (not Central), but they have helped with Central tryouts up to last year and you are SO wrong that they take players getting low level offers or none at all! The line is usually out the door for those coach conferences and most players offered a spot take it on the spot and there is no trend of accepting on the spot then rejecting when the written offer comes in.

But since you said this, please, what is your source for that? You're also wrong about Central usually being on bottom of the regional performance rankings, but anyone can look in AES over the last 4 or 5 yrs to see that for themselves that they're almost never last of Metro's regional clubs.

I'm not the person you are responding to, but for fun, I did look at AES from last year, looking only at Metro teams:
18s: 18 Central was lowest rated (44 overall)
17s: no Central team. North was lowest rated (12 overall)
16s: Central was 2nd lowest (77 overall), ahead of South FX (107 overall)
15s: Central was 2nd lowest (76 overall), ahead of East (79 overall)
14s: Central was 3rd lowest (52 overall), ahead of South PW (82 overall) and East (119 overall)
13s: Central was 2nd lowest (28 overall), ahead of South PW (69 overall)
12s: Central was 2nd lowest (28 overall), ahead of East (29 overall)

Based on this, they are consistently on the low end, though not always the *lowest*. I am a data geek by trade and fast with a spreadsheet, so I also combined the results across age groups from last season to derive this:

Branch Avg Win % Performance Tier
Travel 92.9% 🟩 Elite
North 65.3% 🟧 Strong
Central 55.7% 🟨 Moderate
East 53.9% 🟨 Moderate
South FX 50.4% 🟥 Low
South PW 49.6% 🟥 Low

Wow PP, you are my new Favorite Poster! This is GREAT! And yeah, you sure did prove my point: While North is definitely consistently the strongest Metro Regional/Select team, Central is literally the next best team (followed very closely behind by East). It's true, this last season East beat Central in a couple of age groups, so East and Central are very close though Central historically was usually better and ranked higher.

You also proved that the MISinformation PP was wrong that Central is consistently below the Metro South 2 teams. Though one of those teams last season did really well in a couple of age groups.

I appreciate you PP. DCUM is often a wild ride because when you do know something factual about the topic, and someone else posts utter BS or pure fiction, yes you can speak to the factual truth and see who believes you, but rarely do you actually get data gathered to show the status of the situation. You did that though, thanks! Maybe at least one PP now in these convos will think twice before posing made up stuff as "fact" in a compellingly factual-seeming way

Me again, I got so excited I didn't reflect the data shown well. Central was posed by the BS poster as consistently LAST. That is not true, as stated by this data. And the last data there shows Metro as 2nd below North (not including Travel in this since this part of convo was about regional teams) with East very close behind.

Overall, Central is on the lower end but literally never last. That was what I really meant to write, but I got excited and only focused on 2nd data set. And that was incorrect, which I can admit to because I like facts and data too, unlike the "Central is consistently last!" PP.

Thanks for the data, love that we can have this discussion based on that. Lets focus on U15-U18 because that's what this thread is about -- the new tryouts for those age groups.

First, we can't use regional ranks. They are meaningless. Also, winning percentage only matters when you consider the competition. An open level team playing in a club tournament will win almost every match, a club level team playing open will lose most. That's what national rankings take into account. That's why CHRVA only uses national ranks for bid qualification and why it requires at least one open tournament in the region to qualify -- so teams can't play easy schedules and still qualify for bids over much better teams.

Second, lets look over multiple years and compare Metro Central's finishing position relative to the other Metro teams based on those national ranks.

2025
15: 6th out of 6 teams (#4159)
16: 5th out of 6 teams (#3604)
17: No Team
18: 5th out of 5 teams (#1983)

2024
15: 6th out of 6 teams (#2863)
16: 6th out of 6 teams (#3262)
17: No Team
18: 3rd out of 5 teams (#1680)

2023
15: 3rd out of 6 teams (#1636)
16: 5th out of 6 teams (#2924)
17: No Team
18: 3rd out of 6 teams (#1281)

In 2025, Metro Central's three teams finished last, last and next to last out of all of the Metro teams. In 2024 Central's teams finished last, last and 3rd out of 5th. The last year Metro Central was really competitive compared to other Metro teams was 2023, and that year their teams were still in the middle to bottom part of the rankings.

For the previous two years, based on National ranks, 4/6 Metro Central teams were last in ranking across all Metro teams in their age group. A fifth one was next to last.

"First, we can't use regional ranks. They are meaningless." LOL PP, thanks for saying this early on so we know to dismiss whatever comes next. You made a lot of effort there to justify your original erroneous comments. You're still not fooling us, but if it makes you feel better, cool, you do you

The question of national vs. regional rankings has been covered extensively in many other threads here. No tournaments use regional rankings for seeding, they all use national rankings. CHRVA bids uses national rankings for acceptance--EVEN THOUGH IT IS A REGIONAL ONLY TOURNAMENT--into the bid tournament and does not use regional rankings. Without the additional information provided below, its enough to know that when tournament seeding and bid entrances are being determined, national ranks are used. And FYI -- national rankings are also used for seeding any qualifier tournaments, national competititons and any out of region tournament where a CHRVA team participates against other teams from a different region. If all the Metro teams registered for the same division in the same tournament they would be seeded based on their national rank -- and Metro Central would have been seeded last 7/11 times.

What are regional rankings?
Regional rankings only take into account the games played against other teams in the region. Regional rankings suffer from multiple data problems, including small data set issues and strength of schedule bias. AES rankings are power weighted by direct competition -- if you play a few matches against weak competition and win you are ranked high. If you play a lot of matches against tough competition you can be ranked lower. And if you never play a good team but win all your matches against poor performing teams you will be ranked well above your actual performance.

For example, GO Volley 15 N went 5-0 against regional teams, ranking 9th in the region with 100% win rate. Based on National rankings they were 24th, ranking #1283 with a 43% win rate. In other words, they played in a lower level regional tournament and won it (hence the 5-0 record) but when they play in higher level tournaments they lose more than half of their matches. None of their other matches were against CHRVA opponents. Same thing for PSVBC (11-0) - 14th in region, 100% win rate, but 60% win rate nationally, #1595 rank and ~30th in region. If I rank of either of them on just regional play they would show up as "ELITE" with 100% win rate and equal to Metro Travel in the table with the colors above. No one believes that either team are a Metro Travel level team, or anywhere close.

Why are national rankings better?
They aren't perfect, but they are the standard for comparison now. Generally, a team ranked higher in national rankings is expected to win against a lower ranked team. The closer the ranking difference the closer the match is expected to be. Losing to a highly ranked team in a close match will actually improve your ranking. Beating the 6000th team in the country can actually hurt it if you don't win by a large margin. This is why national rankings are generally used for seeding -- they incorporate more data and are much more predictive of team performance in tournaments.

All of this is summarized from other threads, with recent examples thrown in.

TLDR: Tournaments don't uses regional rankings for seeding, CHRVA bids don't use them to determine qualification. Its easy to get an artificially high or low regional ranking due to small data set issues. And the consensus on every thread on this board that national rankings are much more indicative of performance than regional rankings.

I'm newer to this chicken fight. Who is losing talent to Metro Central that wants to fight this fight so badly? They are clearly a middle of the road if even team based on the data, so it can't be one of the better teams losing talent to a mid-to-meh level regional Central squad.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the U12-U14 data as well for Metro Central

2025
U12: 4/4
U13: 4/5
U14: 3/6

2024
U12: 3/3
U13: No Team
U14: 6/6

2023
U12: 3/3
U13: No Team
U14: 4/4

In the U12-U14 age group for the past two seasons, Central's teams were last compared to all other Metro teams 3/5 times. Across all ages they were last 7/11 times. The statement made above that "Central is historically the worst region in terms of performance" is true, at least based on national ranks. In fact no other region is close to those numbers. The next closes is Metro East with 4 teams at the bottom over the past two years.

I'm a newbie: please explain how regional rankings show a different order for each of these than national data? Doesn't national data just include a zillion more teams, but why would including more teams mean the CHRVA region teams' order of rankings is re-arranged? Also just FYI the way you listed this with no specific team data to compare what your posting makes it seem less reliable and less trustworthy.

The regional rankings only use results against teams from the same region while the national rankings use all of a team’s results. So a team might be 15-3 against regional opponents while they are 20-15 overall. It’s generally assumed that the national rankings are a better indicator of how good a team really is.

Teams that are chasing bids to USAV nationals will often only play in the minimum number of regional tournaments required to qualify for bid regionals meaning they have very few results against regional opponents making the regional only rankings almost meaningless. That’s one of the reasons CHRVA uses national rankings in deciding who gets into bid regionals.

Anonymous wrote:Here's the U12-U14 data as well for Metro Central

2025
U12: 4/4
U13: 4/5
U14: 3/6

2024
U12: 3/3
U13: No Team
U14: 6/6

2023
U12: 3/3
U13: No Team
U14: 4/4

In the U12-U14 age group for the past two seasons, Central's teams were last compared to all other Metro teams 3/5 times. Across all ages they were last 7/11 times. The statement made above that "Central is historically the worst region in terms of performance" is true, at least based on national ranks. In fact no other region is close to those numbers. The next closes is Metro East with 4 teams at the bottom over the past two years.

I'm a newbie: please explain how regional rankings show a different order for each of these than national data? Doesn't national data just include a zillion more teams, but why would including more teams mean the CHRVA region teams' order of rankings is re-arranged? Also just FYI the way you listed this with no specific team data to compare what your posting makes it seem less reliable and less trustworthy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Metro regional teams are actually pretty good if you look at AES rankings. Metro North and Metro East frequently rank ahead of other travel teams in the region.

Metro North has historically been the second best Metro team after Travel. Their location plus history has allowed them to attract good players.

East has been extremely variable, sometimes good but just as often at the bottom of the Metro teams and the lower third of the region.

South PW and South FX are similar to East but with even more variability across ages and a lower level of performance when they do well.

Central is historically the worst region in terms of performance. They usually take players that are receiving low level offers from other clubs or no offers at all.

Generally, no one would consider the Metro regionals expect North close to the performance of other travel teams, unless you count the clubs that travel when they really shouldn’t.

WOW is that some serious MISinformation! Please, share your source for this? We have a family member who's coached metro regional teams in last 5 years, (not Central), but they have helped with Central tryouts up to last year and you are SO wrong that they take players getting low level offers or none at all! The line is usually out the door for those coach conferences and most players offered a spot take it on the spot and there is no trend of accepting on the spot then rejecting when the written offer comes in.

But since you said this, please, what is your source for that? You're also wrong about Central usually being on bottom of the regional performance rankings, but anyone can look in AES over the last 4 or 5 yrs to see that for themselves that they're almost never last of Metro's regional clubs.

I'm not the person you are responding to, but for fun, I did look at AES from last year, looking only at Metro teams:
18s: 18 Central was lowest rated (44 overall)
17s: no Central team. North was lowest rated (12 overall)
16s: Central was 2nd lowest (77 overall), ahead of South FX (107 overall)
15s: Central was 2nd lowest (76 overall), ahead of East (79 overall)
14s: Central was 3rd lowest (52 overall), ahead of South PW (82 overall) and East (119 overall)
13s: Central was 2nd lowest (28 overall), ahead of South PW (69 overall)
12s: Central was 2nd lowest (28 overall), ahead of East (29 overall)

Based on this, they are consistently on the low end, though not always the *lowest*. I am a data geek by trade and fast with a spreadsheet, so I also combined the results across age groups from last season to derive this:

Branch Avg Win % Performance Tier
Travel 92.9% 🟩 Elite
North 65.3% 🟧 Strong
Central 55.7% 🟨 Moderate
East 53.9% 🟨 Moderate
South FX 50.4% 🟥 Low
South PW 49.6% 🟥 Low

Wow PP, you are my new Favorite Poster! This is GREAT! And yeah, you sure did prove my point: While North is definitely consistently the strongest Metro Regional/Select team, Central is literally the next best team (followed very closely behind by East). It's true, this last season East beat Central in a couple of age groups, so East and Central are very close though Central historically was usually better and ranked higher.

You also proved that the MISinformation PP was wrong that Central is consistently below the Metro South 2 teams. Though one of those teams last season did really well in a couple of age groups.

I appreciate you PP. DCUM is often a wild ride because when you do know something factual about the topic, and someone else posts utter BS or pure fiction, yes you can speak to the factual truth and see who believes you, but rarely do you actually get data gathered to show the status of the situation. You did that though, thanks! Maybe at least one PP now in these convos will think twice before posing made up stuff as "fact" in a compellingly factual-seeming way

Me again, I got so excited I didn't reflect the data shown well. Central was posed by the BS poster as consistently LAST. That is not true, as stated by this data. And the last data there shows Metro as 2nd below North (not including Travel in this since this part of convo was about regional teams) with East very close behind.

Overall, Central is on the lower end but literally never last. That was what I really meant to write, but I got excited and only focused on 2nd data set. And that was incorrect, which I can admit to because I like facts and data too, unlike the "Central is consistently last!" PP.

Thanks for the data, love that we can have this discussion based on that. Lets focus on U15-U18 because that's what this thread is about -- the new tryouts for those age groups.

First, we can't use regional ranks. They are meaningless. Also, winning percentage only matters when you consider the competition. An open level team playing in a club tournament will win almost every match, a club level team playing open will lose most. That's what national rankings take into account. That's why CHRVA only uses national ranks for bid qualification and why it requires at least one open tournament in the region to qualify -- so teams can't play easy schedules and still qualify for bids over much better teams.

Second, lets look over multiple years and compare Metro Central's finishing position relative to the other Metro teams based on those national ranks.

2025
15: 6th out of 6 teams (#4159)
16: 5th out of 6 teams (#3604)
17: No Team
18: 5th out of 5 teams (#1983)

2024
15: 6th out of 6 teams (#2863)
16: 6th out of 6 teams (#3262)
17: No Team
18: 3rd out of 5 teams (#1680)

2023
15: 3rd out of 6 teams (#1636)
16: 5th out of 6 teams (#2924)
17: No Team
18: 3rd out of 6 teams (#1281)

In 2025, Metro Central's three teams finished last, last and next to last out of all of the Metro teams. In 2024 Central's teams finished last, last and 3rd out of 5th. The last year Metro Central was really competitive compared to other Metro teams was 2023, and that year their teams were still in the middle to bottom part of the rankings.

For the previous two years, based on National ranks, 4/6 Metro Central teams were last in ranking across all Metro teams in their age group. A fifth one was next to last.

"First, we can't use regional ranks. They are meaningless." LOL PP, thanks for saying this early on so we know to dismiss whatever comes next. You made a lot of effort there to justify your original erroneous comments. You're still not fooling us, but if it makes you feel better, cool, you do you