Squash Analytics: Fastest Improving Elite Boys by David Keating
June 14, 2018
Squash
recruiting season is around the corner, so I thought it might be
interesting to look at the top U17 and U19 boys and find who has
improved the most in the last year or two. Recruiting the right players
is a tough job. After all, the player recruited as a senior (or rising
senior) probably won’t be the same player as a sophomore. Some might
not improve much in college. But some will improve. A lot. Of course,
likely improvement is just one factor coaches look for in recruits.
As part of a broader research project and a previous article, I
examined 176 data points for the 44 of the top BU17 and BU19 boys who
played at the junior nationals in March. For this article I was looking
for who had improved the most over the last year and last two years.
Over the last two years, five BU19 boys stood out, each with stunning
skill rating gains: Liam Rotzoll, Alastair Cho, Teddy Eill, Thomas
Rosini, and Dillon Huang. Rotzoll led the pack with an incredible gain
of 1.02 rating points. After Huang, who rose by 0.78 points, no one
else rose by more 0.7 points! Huang’s rise may be the most
impressive as it came from the highest base – he had a skill rating of
5.14 in 2016.
The soaring skills of Thomas Rosini and Huang bode well for the US
Junior World Team in 2020. Both are 16 years old and both played up
into BU19 this year. Rosini landed a spot among the four named to the
team, while Huang gained the developmental spot. Both have been
improving at stellar rates and with two more years to improve, there is
reason for optimism this summer and in 2020.
To put these numbers in perspective, the typical elite BU19 improves by
0.25 rating points each year. BU17s, who come from a lower skill level
base, improve by about 0.30 rating points. That means the fastest
improving players are improving at nearly double the rate of others.
You can make up a lot of ground on better players if it continues. What
we don’t know, yet, is whether this rate of improvement will continue
beyond high school, or for how long, for each of the players. Still, if
one had to choose between two potential recruits and one of the two has
been improving a lot lately, the improving player might be a better
bet, even if his skill is not yet the equal of the better player.
Top 10 Most Improved 2016 to 2018, BU19 Nationals
Top 10 Most Improved Last Year, BU19 Nationals
Looking at the two lists, 8 of the 10 are the same boys. Only Holey and
Best appear on the 2018 list compared to the list of those who gained
the most since 2016.
Rotzoll’s gain was remarkable – each year he gained about 0.50 rating
points. That helped him reach the BU19 quarterfinals in the 2018 Junior
Nationals. Last year, he didn’t even qualify for the BU17 Junior
Nationals, though he did win the BU17 U.S. Junior Silver Squash
Championships.
Another interesting fact: among the top 10 most improved over the last
two years, six of them finished in the top 10, including the winner,
Daelum Mawji.
Among the BU17s, the pattern is similar. There is a lot of overlap
between the best players and those improving the fastest. Five of
the top 10 most improved since 2016 finished in the top 10 at Junior
Nationals. The winner, Maxwell Velazquez, and finalist, Jed
Burde, were in a statistical dead heat with the 10th ranked most
improved boy, with gains of 0.65 and 0.64 respectively.
Even more remarkable is among the top 5 fastest improving BU17 Junior
Nationals boys over the last year, four of them finished in the top 5.
Top 10 Most Improved 2016 to 2018, BU17 Nationals
Top 10 Most Improved Last Year, BU17 Nationals
Author’s note: I’d like to do a
similar analysis of the top girls, but compiling this data was a lot of
work and I don’t have the time to do it. I’m hoping to find ways to
obtain such data without looking it up one data point at a time.
