Just in time to cure the summer slump, the Olympics are here, entertaining us daily for a few weeks with inspiring performances and the chance to bring home some medals. This year, Team USA’s 594 athletes hail from 46 states, so nearly everyone has someone to cheer for (apologies to those in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Wyoming and North Dakota). What do we know about Team USA, and what can we learn from looking at their hometowns?
First, some basics. California is home to 20% of the athletes on Team USA, a total of 121 athletes, Florida behind them with 42 athletes and Texas with 41. Because of this, the summer team is very west coast heavy, with key counties on the east coast having no hometown athletes, including Kings, Suffolk and New York counties in New York. The following counties round out the list of largest counties in America with no Olympic athletes:
- Fresno, California
- Capitol, Connecticut (Hartford area)
- Pierce, Washington
- Macomb, Michigan
- El Paso, Texas
- Baltimore, Maryland
- Oklahoma, Oklahoma
- San Joaquin, California
By contrast, the list below shows the counties that have the most hometown athletes, with the total number of athletes from their respective county. Unsurprisingly given the list of states with the most athletes, Los Angeles and San Diego make up the top 2, with a few other California cities also making the top list.
- Los Angeles, California 28
- San Diego, California 24
- Orange, California 18
- Harris, Texas 14
- Cook, Illinois14
- Santa Clara, California 10
- Contra Costa, California 9
- Morris, New Jersey 7
- Maricopa, Arizona 7
When you look at individual sports, patterns emerge on regional preferences. California seems to excel at some of the newer Olympic sports, with 5/7 beach volleyball teammates, 5/6 badminton players, 4/7 golfers, 8/12 skateboarders, and 23/26 of the water polo players all coming from that state. By contrast, 9/16 field hockey players are from Pennsylvania, a clear regional bias in sport preference, as field hockey is stereotypically a northeastern sport. The canoe and kayakers come from either Washington State or North Carolina, fitting as those sports need access to a coast for practice. Three of the four mountain bikers come from Colorado (2) and Utah (1), with the 4th coming from California, all places with access to mountains. And of course, the surfing team comes from California (2), Hawaii (2) and Florida (1).
While looking at the list of athletes, we noticed that a number of competitors in the same sports shared last names and hometowns (or at least nearby towns). And while geographically, athletes tend to be from the same areas, it would also make sense that families would participate in the same sports, after all, we see it frequently among professional athletes.
- Field Hockey – Brook Deberdine (Lancaster, PA) and Emma Deberdine (Millersville, PA)
- Water Polo – Ryder Dodd and Chase William Dodd (Long Beach, CA)
- Swimming – Alex Shackell and Aaron Shackell (Carmel, IN)
- Swimming – Gretchen Walsh and Alex Walsh (Nashville TN)
- Track and Field – Juliette Whittaker, Isabella Marie Whittaker, Laurel Maryland
- Badminton – Annie Xu, Kerry Xu, San Jose California
As for us, we cheered on our own hometown athlete, Marcos Giron of Thousand Oaks, California (AGS HQ) who competes in Men’s Singles Tennis. No matter where you live, you are likely to find someone to cheer for this year during the Olympics.
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