Every year the Southern Section gets tougher and tougher for track causing many excellent athletes to be left at home . Some divisons are not even able to qualify a single athlete. Such as in D2 for the 1600 you had to run 411 to move on. Other sections have some athletes that aren't as good going to state. While many more qualified athletes from the southern section can't even make it past the Southern Section finals . Should the Section be broken up to have more equality ?
Yes. Everybody knows that.
Simple fix. Allow anyone who hits the state auto mark in any league trials (or meet upward in qualifying rounds) qualify for the state meet.
While you at it marks need to be wind legal.
If you have 1-2 extra heats so be it.
Yes, it should. Without disrupting the subjective sports the best way to do this would be the establishment of qualifying window for the state meet. Have an auto qualifier and "B" standard for all events. Take the top 36 athletes in each event and get rid of all of these rounds. If your section doesn't have representation at the state meet then run faster, jump and throw further.
But letsbehonest.com (I'm registering that domain here in a minute). Hal Harknes is a relic of the past who has no incentive to make progressive, logical changes to the current system. We need new leadership in CIF but that won't happen anytime soon.
Name:
I get they want a geographic state meet and I do feel section champions should go. I also don't mind sections getting three spots in most sections, those are not taking away from the meet. But by having a "qualifying window" that allows kids to run a 4:11 in division meets but don't advance by place to the section championship can still make it. So they have 4 heats of the mile instead of three.
3200 needs a trials as well. And it should be a 3 day meet with trials spread over 2 days so 1600/3200 get 2 days recovery.
If golf can miss a week a few of school a few track kids is no big deal. Many schools are out then anyways.
Simple fixes but you need the votes. Plus another day and a few extra entries is another day 13,000 tickets sold, more concessions, more t-shirts.
The Donger wrote:
I get they want a geographic state meet and I do feel section champions should go. I also don't mind sections getting three spots in most sections, those are not taking away from the meet. But by having a "qualifying window" that allows kids to run a 4:11 in division meets but don't advance by place to the section championship can still make it. So they have 4 heats of the mile instead of three.
3200 needs a trials as well. And it should be a 3 day meet with trials spread over 2 days so 1600/3200 get 2 days recovery.
If golf can miss a week a few of school a few track kids is no big deal. Many schools are out then anyways.
Simple fixes but you need the votes. Plus another day and a few extra entries is another day 13,000 tickets sold, more concessions, more t-shirts.
The cream rises to the top, and that's about all that matters when it comes to a Championship. Tell me who was left home from CIF Finals that was going to make the podium at State?
I completely agree all these qualifying rounds, where kids are asked to run at or very near 100% just 6-7 days apart for 6 weeks in a row, is totally ridiculous. It's a huge misunderstanding of the physiology and psychology behind a peak performance, but HH doesn't care about that; they are happy with the status quo.
I see both sides of the coin, but don't have the capacity to flip it over onto it's head.
Southern California has for over 100 years dominated Olympic, professional, college, and prep sports.
I saw D2 1600 such horrible race. A 4:19 shouldnt win nor make it pass finals. Just train harder like everyone else that's the point of CIF.
I said it a million times on the old dye starchy boards. The cif needs a complete restructuring. we currently have 7 sections north of the grapevine and 3 sections to the south. Of those 3, sds is a normal size. Las is tiny. And ss is huge. Re organize those 3 into equal sized sections. Take the 7 sections in the north and squish them down to four. Then you have 8 sections. Four north and four south. This makes for a nice easy bracket for every sport to hold a state championship. Berths for sports such as track. Cross and wrestling could still be adjusted based on the relative performance of the section at the state meets
Everything you said makes sense except implying this is a new thing. Almost thirty years ago a guy didn't make state with a 9:05; that same year a kid from Oakland section went with a 10+.
Dividing up SS would be an option but Masters is such an insane meet it would be a shame to kill it. Auto times are another option but would make for uneven fields. I think the best solution is to auto advance fewer places per section and fill out the field by times.
Think of it like this...
Sections are like States. And no state in the union will just allow itself to dissolve into another state. And it will NEVER happen in CIF either. Never.
You best bet is to make 7 south, 7 north.
If you understand CIF politics you understand that sections only care about their meet. Qualifying for state is not their priority not dictates how they manage their championships.
I agree that the sections are their own little feifdoms and their existence pre-dates that of a state level meet in any sport.
However, the sections are constantly forcing the leagues to re-align as new schools open and some schools grow and others shrink. It is called "maintaining competitive balance"
It sure would be nice to see re-alignment at the state level and I don't think it is acurate to say that "all the sections care about is their own championships".
CoachB wrote:
I agree that the sections are their own little feifdoms and their existence pre-dates that of a state level meet in any sport.
However, the sections are constantly forcing the leagues to re-align as new schools open and some schools grow and others shrink. It is called "maintaining competitive balance"
It sure would be nice to see re-alignment at the state level and I don't think it is acurate to say that "all the sections care about is their own championships".
What would the southern section gain by splitting? Nothing.
As a qualifier from cif ss masters, I do think that it is complete bs with the other sections. I have to put an insane amount of effort just to qualify, while many of these other sections can jog their way to state. Many of the sections have been consistently weak for unreasonable amounts of times. Just look at CIF SS Finals. Under the EPI standard, there were 733 elite times. In CIF Oakland Finals, there were only 7. CIF finals in sections like these is a complete joke compared to the the one that the southern section has. How is it fair when a runner there can say that they are a CIF champion when they barely went sub 11:00 in the 3200? Even the girls in the southern section destroy that time. Maybe they just have to combine the other crappy sections so that it matches the harder sections.
Yeah a boy can go to state in California with a 10:54 because he is in the right section.While in the southern section you get left home with a 908 3200.
beer can wrote:
What would the southern section gain by splitting? Nothing.
Don't be so sure of that. By splitting into a smaller section, they might be able to get more spots in total at state.
All sections should qualify by the same time standards, for example if the time to make is a 4:10, or a 4:15 mile or whatever the mark they set it should be just that for everyone.
Not sure if it is still this way, but The Southern Section used to take the 9 Fasterst Times from all the Division Championships held, all held at Cerritos College on The same Day and the 9 fastest from The Divisionals in each even advanced to the Masters Meet,, where the top 5 Advance to State,, Everyone seemed to like that way of doing it.
Division 1 Southern Section for XC is deep.