New WFTDA Rankings Released
WFTDA has released their quarterly team rankings for the April-July period, and while once again there's not too much movement near the top, the big story this time around is the increased amount of ranked teams. After only 26 teams being eligible for rankings in the January quarter, the April quarter has 39 teams ranked (out of 55 total), with a couple of new leagues making their ranking debut and most inactive leagues coming out of inactive status.
WFTDA rankings are not determined by a weighted or statistical system — rather, each WFTDA league submits their own list of rankings and the results are averaged. Also, WFTDA considers leagues “inactive” and does not include them in rankings if they fail to meet membership requirements during a quarter. "Inactive" status does not necessarily mean a league has not played recent bouts.
Spaces one through ten have not changed since January, with the four finalists from the 2007 WFTDA tournament still holding on the spots -- Kansas City, Rat City, Carolina and Texas (though Texas finished ahead of Carolina at September's Nationals, they swapped spots after Carolina edged Kansas City in December.)
The first big change is Portland's Rose City, showing up at #11 after being inactive in the last ranking period, followed by Boston at #16, also back from inactive status. There will be some bouts this ranking period that have the potential to shake things up near the top -- Rose City will be playing #10 Bay Area on May 10, and there will a bout between #4 Texas and #5 Gotham, along with a #9 Philly vs. #7 Windy City bout, at the June 2008 East Coast Extravaganza event.
There's little upward movement by individual teams who were ranked last time. In fact, with the high-level returns of Portland and Boston automatically pushing most teams down a couple of slots, there are only two teams that moved up at all in the rankings, and even then only by two places -- Baltimore's Charm City rides a four-game WFTDA win streak to go up to #13 from #15, and Norfolk, VA's Dominion, also 4-0 over their last encounters, rises from #22 to #20.
In the mid-levels, the only other significant movements are Madison -- falling six spots from #11 to #17 -- and Sin City, who were ranked #17 in the October 2007 quarter and were inactive in the January 2008 quarter, but now come back notably lower at #29.
Most of the big changes are in the twenties and thirties. Debuting leagues include the up-and-coming Cincinnati at #26, Northwest Arkansas at #33, and Pittsburgh's Steel City at #35, while many previously inactive leagues get ranked again after missing the previous quarter (Grand Raggidy at #23, Pikes Peak at #27, Ohio at #28, Assassination City at #30, No Coast at #34, and Big Easy at #37.)
Quite a few leagues who were previously just outside of the top 20 see big drops in their rankings due to those aforementioned reappearances. The biggest single drop is for San Antonio's Alamo City, who haven't played too much interleague recently -- they go 12 spaces down from #26 in January to #38 currently. Similar drops include Milwaukee's Brew City -- dropping 11 spots from #25 to #36 -- and LA's Angel City, which goes 8 spaces down from #24 to #32.
April 2008 WFTDA Rankings
1. Kansas City Roller Warriors (no change)
2. Rat City Rollergirls [Seattle, WA] (no change)
3. Carolina Rollergirls [Raleigh, NC] (no change)
4. Texas Rollergirls [Austin, TX] (no change)
5. Gotham Girls Roller Derby [New York, NY] (no change)
6. Tucson Roller Derby (no change)
7. Windy City Rollers [Chicago, IL] (no change)
8. Detroit Derby Girls (no change)
9. Philly Rollergirls (no change)
10. B.ay A.rea D.erby Girls [San Francisco, CA] (no change)
11. Rose City Rollers [Portland, OR] (previously inactive)
12. Minnesota Rollergirls [St. Paul, MN] (no change)
13. Charm City Roller Girls [Baltimore, MD] (+2)
14. Rocky Mountain Rollergirls [Denver, CO] (-1)
15. Providence Roller Derby (-1)
16. Boston Derby Dames [Boston, MA] (previously inactive)
17. Mad Rollin' Dolls [Madison, WI] (-6)
18. Duke City Derby [Albuquerque, NM] (-1)
19. Arizona Roller Derby [Phoenix, AZ] (-3)
20. Dominion Derby Girls [Norfolk, VA] (+2)
21. Dallas Derby Devils (-2)
22. Atlanta Rollergirls (-4)
23. Grand Raggidy Roller Girls [Grand Rapids, MI] (previously inactive)
24. Houston Rollergirls (-4)
25. Denver Roller Dolls (-4)
26. Cincinnati Roller Girls (ranking debut)
27. Pikes Peak Derby Dames [Colorado Springs, CO] (previously inactive)
28. Ohio Roller Girls [Columbus, OH] (previously inactive)
29. Sin City Rollergirls [Las Vegas, NV] (previously inactive)
30. Assassination City Derby [Dallas, TX] (previously inactive)
31. Fort Wayne Derby Girls (-7)
32. Angel City Derby Girls [Los Angeles, CA] (-8)
33. Northwest Arkansas Rollergirls [Fayetteville, AR] (ranking debut)
34. No Coast Derby Girls [Lincoln, NE] (previously inactive)
35. Steel City Derby Demons [Pittsburgh, PA] (ranking debut)
36. Brewcity Bruisers [Milwaukee, WI] (-11)
37. Big Easy Rollergirls [New Orleans, LA] (previously inactive)
38. Alamo City Rollergirls [San Antonio, TX] (-12)
39. Dixie Derby Girls [Huntsville, AL] (previously inactive)
Inactive leagues
East Texas Bombers [Tyler, TX]
Gem City Rollergirls [Dayton, OH]
Unranked leagues (teams that have not yet played 2 games against ranked teams)
Arch Rival Rollergirls [St. Louis, MO]
Burning River Rollergirls [Cleveland, OH]
DC Rollergirls [Washington, DC]
CT Rollergirls [Waterbury, CT]
Green Country Roller Girls [Tulsa, OK]
Long Island Roller Rebels [Old Bethpage, NY]
Maine Roller Derby [Portland, ME]
Naptown Rollergirls [Indianapolis, IN]
Nashville Rollergirls [Nashville, TN)
OC Rollergirls [Irvine, CA]
Oly Rollers [Olympia, WA]
Sacred City Derby Girls [Sacramento, CA]
Salt City Derby Girls [Salt Lake City, UT]
Tampa Bay Derby Darlings
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Comments
I wonder how much effect
I wonder how much effect flattrackstats.com has on the rankings? How many leagues look at that site?
Subsequently
Enjoy the spamprovement - Ed.
Probably not nearly enough
Probably not nearly enough of them... just my guess...
Nice to see a lot of leagues back in the mix, though.
Why aren't the Long Island
Why aren't the Long Island Roller Rebels ranked? I know, at least, they've played Charm City, Dominion, and Steel City who are all ranked.
I look at flattrackstats.com
I look at flattrackstats.com just about every day! It's awesome.
My guess is Long Island isn't ranked yet because I *believe* the rankings require that a league plays at least two division 1 or 2 leagues before they are ranked. I agree though that it should count if the opponent is ranked at all, regardless of division. However, that's probably moot in this case because Charm City and Steel City weren't ranked at the time they played Long Island. Anyone feel free to correct me on any of that though!
Jonathan, I think Sweet N.
Jonathan,
I think Sweet N. Lowdown is right. I heard something (unofficial) a while ago that there may be some provision for retroactive inclusion, but if that's true, I'd hope it was time-limited. Both of those bouts were more than a year ago, so I'd question the validity of ranking based on those numbers. They'd end up like Dixie, shoved to the bottom of the list because no one knows where to put them.
(P.S. No offense intended to Dixie, they just haven't played a WFTDA bout in a long time.)
The short form is, must play
The short form is, must play two ranked teams. With their bout against recently ranked Dominion, they've got just one more to go.
I wonder where they'll be ranked.
/me runs
I don't know what influence
I don't know what influence FTS has, but I know that it's an imperfect concept altogether.
The idea of WFTDA doesn't help in the sense that there are no traditional 'seasons,' so any attempt to create a time boundary of bouts and call that a "season" would be an incorrect imposition. On the other hand, by keeping the "time decay" effect out of the algorithm, there is a biasing of the results that doesn't penalize teams who have had comparatively few, if any, bouts in the past two ranking quarters, and overemphasizes bouts that happened 12-15 months ago.
It seems like FTS is looking
It seems like FTS is looking to eventually factor in "time decay." With derby still being so new, teams evolving so quickly, and so relatively little statistical information, my guess is that they want to establish some kind of a base for the rankings before they start to decay the few stats they do have. That's just speculation though and I'm sure someone from FTS could provide a better/more accurate explanation!
From their website:
"To keep the rankings relevant, bouts start to fade after so many months, and don't affect a ranking as much. (This factor is on hold right now. We're currently not decaying bouts, and all 2007 games are being counted equally. At some point we'll need to start fading bout and tournament influence.)"
message to Hurt-Long Island
message to Hurt-Long Island will be ranked somewhere between Hunter College and Wesleyan.
The Original GGRDonald
methinks WFTDA might wanna yank LIRR's license