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Frankly, much of my awareness to soccer's scoring reality can be credited to having
watched my share of Texas high school soccer matches over the past seven years.
Again, the good folks at the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram
and the Grapevine Sun do a great job reporting on the soccer activities of the local
DFW area high school soccer teams. Here are scans of a very limited number of
Dallas high school soccer matches...
Beginning with a quick look at the scan on the right for the "Sweet 16"
Regional Semi-Finals for Texas 5-5A Schools (the largest division) for
both girls and boys during April 2005. This is a small sampling but all you
need to do is look at the right hand column to realize that 2 total goals
scored by the loosing teams over the 16 matches clearly demonstrates
what it takes to win at the highest level in Texas High School Soccer...
DEFENSE.
Next, lets look at a few larger samples of high school soccer matches
reported on January 18 and 19, 2002:
Which are summarized as follows:
172 total high school games reported (78 boys and 94 girls)
119 of 172 (69%) are shutouts in regulation (including 5 scoreless 0-0 draws in regulation)
8 of 172 (4.6%) are draws in regulation (including 5 scoreless 0-0 draws in regulation)
Bottom line for Dallas/Fort Worth High School Soccer Matches reported on Jan. 18 and 19, 2003:
71% of games finished regulation as either shutouts and/or draws
and the average score of the losing team was: 71 points / 172 games = 0.41 point
Following are scans of the scores of the previous weekend's high school soccer tournaments which were
published January 10, 11, and 12, 2003.
So, for that weekend...
219 total high school games reported (105 boys and 114 girls)
135 of 219 (61.6%) are shutouts in regulation (including 3 scoreless 0-0 draws in regulation)
15 of 219 (7%) are draws in regulation (including 3 scoreless 0-0 draws in regulation)
Bottom line for DFW High School Soccer results reported on Jan. 10, 11, & 12, 2003:
67% of games finished regulation as either shutouts and/or draws
and the average score of the losing team was: 117 points / 219 games = 0.54 point
Mike "but don't get me wrong here...I really like high school soccer" Kimbro
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