If the proposals are approved by the NCHSAA Board of Directors, the fields for the cross country and indoor track state meets, as well as the outdoor regional meets, could get bigger.
Coaches from Wake County have made two separate proposals to the NCHSAA that would change the qualifying procedures for postseason meets in all three seasons. Leesville Road's coaching staff has proposed to eliminate the rules that limit schools to only three qualifiers and one relay in the indoor state meet and outdoor regional meets, while Coach Scott Myers of Holly Springs has proposed a change in the formula that determines the number of cross country teams that advance from regionals to state.
Both proposals were initially made to the North Carolina Track & Cross Country Coaches Association (NCTCCCA), which discussed them and agreed to forward them to the NCHSAA. As part of the proposal process, the NCTCCCA solicits the views of coaches in the state via email voting, and also advocates directly to the NCHSAA on behalf of the proposing coaches.
Proposal 1: Indoor & Outdoor Track - Read Full Proposal
Summary: All athletes that meet the qualifying standard will be allowed to compete at the indoor state meet and the outdoor regionals, eliminating the "3 entries per team" rule. Schools can also qualify multiple relays.
Currently, the NCHSAA limits the number of entries in a particular event to 3 per team. For some of the state's larger programs (or even smaller teams that happen to have a concentration of talent), the result of the rule is that athletes that met the qualifying standard may be left out of the meet. Coaches in this situation face the difficult decision of determining which athletes to enter in which events, taking into account their team's potential opportunity to compete for a regional title. From the athlete's perspective, runners from other teams that met the qualifying standard will get to compete while they stay home. In some cases, qualified athletes from larger teams stay home, while non-qualifiers from smaller teams get in, and that can be doubly frustrating.
For individual events, the effect would vary widely depending on classification, region, and event. Some of the larger 3A and 4A regional meets could see significant increases in the number of qualifiers. In other regionals, though, they are already taking non-qualifiers to fill out the events (to a total of 12 for a 6-lane track or 16 for an 8-lane track). In those regionals, adding a few more qualifiers would have very little effect (and the additional athletes would have meet the qualifying standards, as opposed to non-qualifiers). Indoors, some events already have large numbers competing, and this proposal could make them larger. On the other hand, there have been events (both indoors and outdoors) where there weren't even enough athletes competing to fill all the scoring spots, and those could be helped by admitting more qualifiers.
When it comes to relay events, things could be a lot more complicated. There are certainly some schools that have enough athletes to run two full qualifying relays. The problem lies in verifying that each relay has a completely distinct line-up. A true B-team relay would have the #5 - #8 runners on that team, but who will ensure that so-called B-teams in small, local meets don't contain a few of the team's top 4? The only way to verify that would be to have the B-team qualify in the same race that the A-team runs, but even then the amount of extra work for regional and state meet directors would be imposing.
Coach Nick Mangum of Cardinal Gibbons sums up the feelings of those in favor of unlimited individual qualifiers: "In my opinion, all athletes who hit a state or regional qualifying standard have earned the right to compete!" In fact, the majority of coaches I contacted for this article were in favor of eliminating the "3 per team" rule. When it comes to allowing multiple relay teams, though, there is more skepticism; Mount Tabor coach Patrick Cromwell says, "It is too hard to police and will slow down a meet."
There is also opposition among coaches to the elimination of the "3 per team" rule. Coach Donnie Davis of Cummings, a small program that still regularly has more than 3 qualifiers in several events, expresses it this way: "Even though the situation with having more athletes qualified than can compete in events commonly occurs at Cummings, we don't feel inclined to lobby for the change of the 3 athletes limit. It has never sparked bad feelings among teammates because they are well educated to the rules. If you can be 4th on your team and be rewarded, why work harder to be 3rd?"
Other coaches have expressed concerns that large programs (especially in smaller classifications) might be able to dominate the team scoring for the whole meet with a group of 4-6 athletes in just a few events. This could be prevented with a compromise measure: remove the limits for qualification, but only allow 3 athletes from each team to actually score points in the meet.
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Proposal 2: Cross Country - Still in Draft Form
Summary: Change the number of advancing teams from each regional from 4 to 25% of the participating schools, allowing more teams to advance from larger regionals.
Currently, 4 teams advance from each cross country regional to that classification's state meet. However, this can lead to some pretty large discrepancies among the quality of teams advancing. Even in 4A, the 5th-best team from a particular region can often be a top-10 team at the state meet, and the disparity can sometimes be even worse in smaller classifications.
This proposal would eliminate the fixed number of advancing teams and replace it with a variable number, set at 25% of the teams "participating" in each regional. (The term "participating" has not been defined in the early draft of the proposal - it could mean the teams assigned to the region, or it could mean the actual number of teams that compete.) A region with 16 teams would still advance 4 teams to the state meet, but a region with 20 teams would get 5 advancers, and a region with 24 teams would get 6. The number of advancing teams would be rounded off if it does not come out to a whole number (which also needs to be defined more clearly).
The NCHSAA has repeatedly expressed that their main priority for the postseason for all sports is not to get the top x-number of teams in the playoffs, but rather to have equal representation from all parts of the state. This is the original reason for the fixed number of advancing teams. The NCHSAA has often articulated its desire to make sure that all sports are treated as equally as possible, and some could construe this proposal as asking for unfair treatment for one sport that isn't given to others. Another potential issue with this proposal: just because a region is big doesn't mean its teams are better, or vice versa. If a 1A regional has only 11 teams participating, and only advances 3 to the state meet, who is to say that the 4th team wasn't strong enough to compete?
On the other hand, allowing a larger number of teams to advance to the state meet could increase revenues there, as more spectators might attend the meet. A coach pointed out that increased revenues at the regional and state meets (from greater spectator admissions) should be put back into the sport, for example to pay officials, but it does not seem that coaches have confidence in the NCHSAA to do that.
Reaction to this proposal has been mixed among the coaches I contacted. Coach John Buchholz of Pinecrest points out, "We have done that [advancing by percentage] in both golf and tennis. It did not work." Coach Cromwell simply says, "Cross country is about place and not rankings which are subjective." Coach David Honea of A.C. Reynolds reinforces the NCHSAA's mindset regarding playoffs in all sports:
Reaction among coaches is not all negative, though. Coach Anne Popek of Ragsdale points out that increasing the number of advancing teams would not fundamentally change the nature of the state meet, and it would increase participation and revenue. Coach Karen Hawkins of Leesville Road adds, "If passed, both proposals will go a long way in helping increase the opportunities, and thereby enhance the interscholastic athletic experience, for many more deserving high school track and field athletes across the state."
NOTE: in its 2014 winter meeting, the NCHSAA turned down a proposal to increase the number of team advancing from XC regionals from 4 to 5.