Number of athletes to have a HS Track & Field team

Sprints, distance, throws, jumps (horizontal and vertical), throws, hurdles. It takes more than a couple of joggers to make a track team.

I think nine guys wouldn't make much of a team unless they are all fairly talented.

I would argue that you should be able to field every event.

In Minnesota there are 18 events 4 of which are relays. Athletes are limited to 4 events per meet. This means you need 30 spots which divided by 4 puts you at 8 athletes.

If you have to field two athletes in the non relay events that puts you at 11 athletes which seems fair to me. Its likely you wouldn't have a successful team but I would argue you have a track team.

ohio guy2 wrote:

My educated guess is if Ohio followed the above States requirement of only having 1 athlete to determine if the school has a track and field team - Ohio would have @770 high school boys track & field teams. THUS, the OHSAA would be forced to have 4 divisions instead on 3. This Spring a school with only 305 boys in the bottom three grades will be forced to compete against a school that has 1,350 boys in the bottom three grades. Is this Fair and Equitable?

Indiana doesn't have class competition for "individual" sports so in many cases it is more extreme than your example. What is fair? You can talk fair and unfair all day.

As for your question. One person isn't a team. If states want to recognize one as a team I wouldn't have a problem. A great sprinter/jumper could score a lot of points in a conference meet. Using a one person teams to add a division is crazy.

Seems like the OHSAA is discriminating against a sport which has a lot of diversity - if other States count only 1 athlete as having a program. Didn't the City Schools rally to get another rule changed last spring at the OHSAA??

NOTE: IN Ohio there have been a number of examples where 1 athlete scored enough points to win the State meet by himself. Last year 2 guys on a team which only had 7 on the roster won the Division III Championships.

Seems like the OHSAA is discriminating against a sport which has a lot of diversity - if other States count only 1 athlete as having a program. Didn't the City Schools rally to get another rule changed last spring at the OHSAA??

NOTE: IN Ohio there have been a number of examples where 1 athlete scored enough points to win the State meet by himself. Last year 2 guys on a team which only had 7 on the roster won the Division III Championships.

Last year the one kid won the 100, 110 hurdles and the 300 hurdles He would have finished 2nd as a team, his teammate also scored and they won the team title...

When I was a freshman in high school in 1999, our high school did not an indoor team (we had outdoors and XC). If we wanted to compete during the indoor season, we had to petition our school board to let us compete wearing the school uniform and let us practice on school grounds PROVIDED THAT we covered our own travel and expenses, find our own coaches, and not sue the school for anything should anything happen to us. The school would allow a max of 3 individuals per gender to participate as "four people could create a relay team but the school did not want to have a team" was what our coach told us.

This was in Rhode Island. The public school athletic association is the RI Interscholastic League (RIIL).

It looks like that individual cap rule is still in place, according to the RIIL website (http://riil.org/files/8314/4129/7870/ARTICLE_3_ELIGIBILITY_2015.pdf)

See Section 8, part D, #1 "No school may enter more than three (3) individuals in a particular sport. No alternates or substitutions may be

made or allowed for these individuals." and #4 "No school entering individuals may win a team championship."

Then why would they give the State Championships trophy to a team with only one guy in the Championships. If the person score more points in individual sport with a team score. Would you not give the trophy to the person/team with the most POINTS?!