What's the most difficult state to qualify for state in Cross Country and why?

The hardest states to qualify for the championship in are probably Cuyahoga and Jefferson, since they do not exist.

California also has 39 million people and are not single class.

Alan

Probably a little difficult for you guys to understand, but similarly to how the Olympic GameS are often shortened to “The Olympics,” state championshipS are often shortened to “states”. Yes, there are many states who have multiple championships due to divisions, classes, private/public, or at least two championships based on gender. There’s for the state championships are shortened to just states.

Calling it "States" sounds so wrong. The final meet of the season (on the state level) is State.

Yes, if you win State in our town, you'd probably get recongnition with the team's accomplishment painted on the water tower.

I'm so glad to know this debate is still raging. This topic provided many good conversations with teammates on runs in college 20 years ago.

I came from a state that uses STATE, and I still believe that to be right.

Best argument the other side had, however, is that we use NATIONALS and WORLDS.

That's a good point with nationals and worlds...

Flip side. If I am competing in a city championship it's not called Cities Championship. What about County? Counties Championship?

Anyone have their LeagueS Championship this week?

I think the CA Southern Section alone is the most difficult, simply because it is back-to-back weeks of your hardest efforts (plus it’s at Mt SAC.) Unless you are NXN-podium caliber, it may require your time to race all out for 4 weeks total. Especially for divisions 1 and 2.

League Finals, CIF SS Prelims, CIF SS Finals, CIF State.

For girls - Maine. They have to run against cheaters with peni$es

It’s got to be OHIO this year. Loaded

Do you think it's also easier to qualify for the world championships than the Indiana State championship because worlds draws from 8 billion?

For track? Incre

There is an objective sheet to this question.

# of participants / # who qualify for state

I can't do it, but someone may be willing to go through all the data to figure it out.

You can find participation numbers for each state on NFHS here:

You could go through the results for each state's championship on MileSplit and add up the number who qualified in each state.

The state with the lowest percentage wins!

Sorry:

# who qualify for state / # of participants

I just did it for boys in Colorado using 2022 data.

3,452 boys participated

Ran at State:

136 in 2A

156 in 3A

153 in 4A

156 in 5A

17.4% of participants completed at the state meet.

In 2014 or 2015 I believe that Liverpool in NY didn't advance to the state meet despite later placing 4th at NXN. The NY state meet qualification system is set up to mirror the tournament format of other sports, in order to advance you have to win your section, (of which there are only 11). Is there any other team that has placed 4th or higher at NXN without even qualifying for their state meet? This happens routinely in NY since many of the better schools are consolidated into only a few sections. Imagine March Madness where the #1 and #2 seeds face off in the round of 64!

Oregon has got to be one of the easiest in XC, 150 schools in the state split into 6 divisions which means 25 schools per division, like a county meet in most states. And, 13 schools make it to the state meet, just over 50%

Sounds like hank disagrees with you too. State, not states.

I disagree. The cutoff time that is lowest is the hardest state. The body doesnt know how many runners there are. Percents dont matter if you cant run the time of the last qualifier. One state cold have 2x as many runners but a higher time for last qualifier. But granted your formula is probably well aligned with the hardest.