LaxNumbers - About Us
Larry Feldman, founder of Laxpower, and Ranking Technologies, founder of MYHockey Rankings, joined forces to create Laxnumbers in February of 2019. With over 40 years of experience in the rankings industry combined, Laxnumbers' mission is to create a centralized database of lax related information while providing high school, college and pro lacrosse rankings to the lacrosse community across North America.
Larry Feldman, a former Air Force Reserves Lt. Colonel and aerospace engineer, founded Laxpower in 1997. Larry attended undergrad at University of Pennsylvania and played on their varsity, JV and freshman lacrosse teams. His time at Penn instilled love and passion for the game of lacrosse that he still carries with him today. He looks back fondly on those years of watching and occasionally playing against the likes of Maryland, Syracuse, Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Lehigh, Lafayette, Swarthmore, Villanova, and others. After his time at Penn, he worked as a 3-D software architect for Intel Corporation, developed a "3-D Engine" for a British gaming company, and served as a senior staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Larry possesses post-graduate or doctorate degrees from the University of Oklahoma, University of Southern California, University of California, Berkeley, Auburn University and Stanford University. In addition, he has received five awards for his work, including first prize in an IBM supercomputing contest, two Cray Research Supercomputer "Gigaflop" awards, an Autodesk First Prize in Scientific Graphics, and first prize in MicroCad Magazine's Engineering Graphics Contest.
Ranking Technologies provides rankings, statistical analysis and consulting to organizing bodies across a wide array of youth sports: Hockey (USA Hockey), Lacrosse (Ontario's OLA, Alberta's ALA), Racing (USAC) and Basketball (CYO). Ranking Technologies began working with the Ontario Lacrosse Association in 2012 and Alberta Lacrosse Association in 2018. Ranking Technologies is also the group behind MYHockey Rankings. MYHockey Rankings was found in 2003 as a way for fans of youth hockey to spread the love of the game and to help team's schedule appropriate competition. It quickly grew into something much larger. Containing 240 ranking categories, 2,600 associations, 4,000 rinks, 22,000 teams and 300,000 game scores annually, MYHockey Rankings has become the go-to website for the youth hockey community.
Laxnumbers' ratings are computed mathematically, with no subjective weighting. Laxnumber computes an average performance rating for each team based upon how well they play against other teams and how good those teams are. There are two real inputs to this rating, they are "AGD" or average goal differential and "SCHED" or strength of schedule. AGD is currently calculated by accumulating the goal differential of each game, to a maximum of 10, and then dividing it by the number of games played. Using a max game goal differential of 10 can "penalize" teams that blow out opponents, but this is common in rating systems as it takes away the incentive for teams to run up scores and allows them to have a bad game by capping the mathematical damage. The strength of schedule is computed by averaging the rating of each game opponent. AGD and SCHED are then added together to compute a team's official rating. A team's rating typically is not reflective of the team's best or worst games, but a mathematically computed average performance rating that translates game scores into a numeric representation of team performance.
The Laxnumbers' team looks forward to supporting the lacrosse community for 2019 and beyond. We appreciate your patience and support!
