Cheverus is the top overall athletic program in Maine. The Stags sit first in The 207 at 91.0, three tenths of a point ahead of Thornton Academy at 90.7.
Put the two schools side by side and they are nearly the same program. Both are Class A. Both field 17 teams. Both post a winning record in at least seven different sports, which is as far as the ranking's breadth tier goes. There is no structural advantage anywhere between them.
The separation is what each did with its games. Cheverus went 103-37 across those 17 teams, a 74 percent win rate. Thornton went 97-42, good for 70 percent. Thornton is the slightly stronger team for team, carrying an average Power Index of 64.9 to Cheverus's 62.7. The 207 counts both, and over a full cycle Cheverus's four extra points of win rate outweighed Thornton's two points of rating.
That is the entire margin. One result either way and the order flips.
Cheverus also carries the Punching Up badge, which the ranking hands to schools that finish near the top while sitting in the smaller half of the state by enrollment. It is the only school in the top five wearing it. Thornton Academy enrolls 1,287. Cheverus enrolls 388, a shade under a third the size, and is matching them across 17 programs at once.
What The 207 actually measures
The 207 is the only ranking in Maine that scores a school across all 11 sports at once: basketball, football, hockey, soccer, baseball, softball, lacrosse, volleyball, field hockey, cross country and track and field. It is not a poll and nobody votes.
Sixty percent of a school's raw score is the average Power Index of its teams, which is the rating each of our engines produces from results, margin and strength of schedule. Forty percent is the school's overall win rate across every team it fields. A program that beats good teams is worth more than a program that piles up wins against a soft schedule, but the record still has to be there.
Two multipliers finish the job. The first is class, because a Class A schedule is a harder road than a Class D one and the ranking says so. The second is breadth. A school gets credit for how many different sports it wins in, so depth in one sport does not carry a program the way being good at seven does. That is the number most likely to move a school, and it is the reason the top of this ranking is full of schools that are competitive in the fall, the winter and the spring rather than dominant in one season.
It rebuilds nightly from real results.
The top five
1. Cheverus, 91.0. 103-37, 74 percent, 17 teams. Best team by Power Index: girls softball at 98.
2. Thornton Academy, 90.7. 97-42, 70 percent, 17 teams. Best team: girls cross country at 98.
3. Edward Little, 84.1. 89-46, 66 percent, 17 teams. Best team: girls hockey at 96.
4. Mount Desert Island, 84.0. 62-30, 67 percent, 13 teams. Best team: girls cross country at 99.
5. Bangor, 83.8. 83-48, 63 percent, 16 teams. Best team: boys cross country at 99.
Third through fifth is its own traffic jam. Edward Little, MDI and Bangor are covered by three tenths of a point, the same gap that separates first from second. Four of the top five field 16 or 17 teams. Mount Desert Island is the exception at 13, which means it is holding that position on quality rather than volume. Its average Power Index of 62.9 is the second best in the top five, behind only Thornton.
Cross country runs through the list. Three of the top five schools have a cross country program as their single strongest team, and the two highest individual marks in the group, MDI's girls and Bangor's boys, are both at 99. Cheverus is the outlier at the very top, led by a girls softball team sitting at 98.
See the full ranking for all 142 schools at ANALYTICS207.COM/rankings.