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The NCHSAA held their Annual Board meeting today and some things were voted on relevant to track and cross country.
The first is what will be known as the "Apex Rule." This year out of the NCHSAA 4A Mideast Regional Apex was the 5th place team, or first team missing states, but had 6 of the 7 individual qualifying spots out of the region. They were not allowed to scores as a team despite having over 5 runners, which is defined as a team in cross country.
It hasn't happened before, but with individual qualifiers being 7 instead of the previous 5 it's more likely to happen going forward, and those teams will score as a team at the state meet.
Another major update in cross country and track and field will be the regional alignment. Instead of the current system using longitude of the school to determine region, the NCHSAA Regionals will go back to being based off of conference affiliation. For example Conference A, Conference B and Conference C make up Region A. Currently teams from conferences are split into different regions in some cases.
Typically the NCHSAA has future region/classification alignments finished at this point in the year. So we aren't sure if this will be in effect in the 2019-2020 season.
We'll keep you updated as more information comes for how regions will be aligned in 2019 XC and Track and Field