I went to spectate an away basket ball game recently. It was a
'small school' tournament intended to keep the spectrum of player skills
comparable. The local school, Blair HS has 89 students. The away team
Cheyenne HS has 87 students augmented with 33 students from a smaller
school system nearby. Blair was handily beaten by Cheyenne.
The program gave the heights of the Cheyenne players: from 5 ft 2 in
to 6 ft 2 in the 18 players involved. Using (rather old) CDC figures
for mean female heights at age 18 - mean 64.2 in, SD 2.43 in, I noticed
that the tallest girls departed considerably from the mean. This should
not be surprising - height is the most important player variable for
winning teams.
Listing the most deviant:
one girl 74 inch SDs 4.04
one 72 in SDs 3.21
one 70 in SDs 2.39
one 69 in SDs 1.98
two 68 in SDs 1.56
three 67 in SDs 1.15
The remaining nine players' heights were in the range -0.91 to 0.74 SDs
I was interested to speculate on causes of such unusual heights - even
though height is a desirable feature for which players are highly selected.
I asked local opinion for clues. I heard that at least one other school
system is known for its winning ways, and I understand that school
populations in country towns are NOT drawn from the nation-wide
distribution - people in country towns are notably more stationary than
townsfolk, so that if there is a genetic strain of tall people in a
small town, the trait is likely to persist. (The Dutch are said to
have the highest mean heights, for example)
Comments like "it's in the water" or ""they are corn-fed" hint at
factors such as hormone analogs and animal growth hormones in the
domestic water supply.
This is such a popular topic in high-school statistics, that I mention
it here, hoping for further insight. I thought it unlikely that another
well-known ruse in competitive sports was in play - the ringer.