At season’s end, a typical assessment of a team’s success considers win-loss records, hardware put on display, and banners raised in the gym. Those standard indicators, however, hide the variation between the schedules for different sports, revealing little about team performance relative to the school’s enrollment.

In order to expand upon the information that a win-loss record provides, Statistics students brainstormed a weighted game value based on the enrollment of opposing schools. Enrollment numbers were sourced from the California Interscholastic Federation directory. 

The game value for a win equals the ratio of the opponent’s enrollment to Nueva’s. (The Upper School enrolls 451 students.) A loss is worth the negative reciprocal of the same ratio.

For example, girls tennis split its two matchups with The King’s Academy, which has 602 students. Since the King’s student body is 1.33 times larger, the win was worth 1.33 on the weighted scale, and the loss was worth -0.75.

Girls tennis finished with an 8–2 record, but about 10 weighted wins and 1 weighted loss. Two victories over Mercy Burlingame (384 students) and one over Notre Dame San Jose (670 students) impacted the weighted total most. 

Note that in the analysis, enrollment at all-girls schools was doubled. While Mercy enrolls fewer students, it has close to double the pool for athletes in wgirls sports. Mercy and Notre Dame were considered 768 and 1340-student schools, respectively. 

Girls volleyball finished with a 13–12 record, and the enrollment-weighted metric values those wins at 12.9, and the losses at -11.6. The weighted win-loss indicates success just above par for the size of Nueva. Had the team beaten every opponent with a smaller athlete pool and lost to all opponents with a larger one, its record would have come out to 11–14. 

The most valuable win came against Kennedy High School in September, worth 2.77 points on the weighted scale.

The team suffered its worst loss to Pinewood, which enrolls 201 students in ninth through 12th grade. That defeat counted as a -2.24 game value, because Nueva enrolls 2.24 times more students than Pinewood.

A loss to Newark Memorial High School, where 1,363 students attend, only cost -0.33. In the standard loss column, it counted the same as any other game.

Girls soccer was a standout of the weighted analysis, with a 19–3 record despite playing just 12 games against smaller schools. The weighted value of the wins pencils out to 22.6, and the losses count for -1.84, meaning the average win for girls soccer was against an opponent with 1.19 times the enrollment. In the team’s three losses, the opponent enrollment averaged 1,201.

By a wide margin, boys volleyball faced the hardest schedule. On average, opponents enrolled 1.85 times more students, as marked in the “strength of schedule” column. However, a defeat to Mountain View Academy—a school of 59 students—spoiled boys volleyball’s weighted record.

The accompanying visual lays out the picture of enrollment-weighted performance from the 2024-2025 year for all sports except cross country, track and field, swimming, and beach volleyball.

Additional research by Rohan T. & Natalie S.