How to use the Report Card Search


Begin by selecting the fields you would like to have returned with your results by checking the boxes next to the field names. The available fields (as they appear on the search page) are as follows:

Team Name (School) Rating
Conference Number Classification Number
Conference Name Classification Name
Rank Report Card

Notice that the Team Name and Rating boxes are checked and grayed out. That is because they are both returned with every search because they are the focus of the Born Power Index.

You can select as many or few fields you want returned. A note of caution: if you have 800x600 resolution or less and you select all of the fields, the results could become cramped and it could be difficult to read the results.

Here is an example of what you would check if you wanted the Rank and the most recent Report Card entry for the teams returned.
Team Name (School) Rating
Conference Number Classification Number
Conference Name Classification Name
Rank Report Card

Moving down the form, you will see two option boxes that have numbers (and NL for No Limit) for the highest and lowest rating to match. They look like this:
Minimum value:   Maximum value:  

You are to select the high and low cutoffs for the report card values to be returned. Lets pretend that we want to know all of the teams that have a report card entry for the past week of 50 or better. To get these results, you would need to set the minimum value to 50, and the maximum to NL (No Limit) like:
Minimum value:   Maximum value:  

For another example, lets imagine that you are playing a team named 'The Very Best' because they won districts the previous year. However, you heard that they were not doing that well this year, so they must have a bad report card value. You are not sure how low it is, but you think it is negative, but not lower than -20. To see what their report card value really is, you would select -20 as the minimum value and 0 as the maximum value, like:
Minimum value:   Maximum value:  

Right below that is an ALTERNATIVE way to search. You can EITHER search for a range OR search for the top or bottom xx percent.

This option, by default, looks like:
Top:        Bottom: Percent

To use this option you must specify top or bottom AND specify a percentage. The percentage has to be an integer (no decimal places) greater than zero, and less than or equal to 100, and you are not to include the percent sign.

For example, if you want to see if 'The Best' (your school) has a report card value that is in the top 25 percent of the state, you click the checkbox next to 'Top' and you would put 25 in the percent field, so the entire field would look like:
Top: Bottom: Percent

This would return the teams with the top 25 percent of the report cards in that state for that sport, with the top report card displayed first.

Alternatively, you think that your arch-rivals, 'Almost the Best,' are in the bottom 10 percent of the report cards, and you want to be sure before you start talking trash. You would check the box next to 'Bottom' and put 10 in the percent field, like:
Top: Bottom: Percent

That would return the schools with the bottom 10 percent of the report cards, with the lowest report card listed first.

A note on ambiguity in the search: If you intend to search by percentage, and you leave the fields in either of the following ways:
Top: Bottom: Percent
OR
Top: Bottom: Percent

the search program will not have sufficient information to search by percentage and it will search for the range that is specified by the high and low cutoffs in the two boxes for the other search option!

 This is intentional in case you change your mind after filling out the percentage information and decide that you want to search for a range of values. In that case, all you would have to do is delete what you have in the 'Percent' field, and it will run the search for the specified range.

There is ANOTHER search option for the Report Card section because the BPI keeps the 'grades' for the schools throughout the entire season. If you would like to see how your team has been progressing in the BPI, you should use this search option. By default, it looks like:
Team's first letter: Number of Weeks:

This lets you specify how many weeks back you would like to trace your team's progress. To use this feature, you must specify a positive integer for the number of weeks, and you must select the letter that the school name begins with.

Let's pretend that you want to follow your team, 'The Best,' back 3 weeks. To do this, you would select T from the list of letters (because 'The Best' begins with T) and you would put 3 in the 'Weeks' field, like:
Team's first letter: Number of Weeks:

This will return the report card entries for the team for the last 3 weeks (if available). It will list them from most recent to oldest (as specified by the column title Week x, where x is the week of the season). It will return all schools that start with that letter in alphabetical order so you can easily find your school of interest.

A note on ambiguity in the search: If you do not specify a number of weeks, the program will assume you do not want to search for the report card history and it will proceed to check if you want to search by percentage.

 This was intentional so you can change your mind after filling out the number of weeks. If you do NOT want to search for the report card history, simply leave the 'Number of Weeks' box blank.

Below that is a button that looks like:

This button sends the information that you have filled out in the form to a program on the server to search the database. The results are then returned in the same window.