NXN 2024 - The Way Too Early Preview - BOYS

Footlocker regions are bigger, and even then Colorado and Utah are in different regions. Why do they need to be in the same region for NXR?

The reality is that breaking up states depending on who is strong at the moment is a bad idea. It's how you get another NY region issue.

NY just needs to merge in with the NE. Bumping Colorado into the HL, California into the SW, and Utah into the NW just creates the issue all over of overly strong regions. You can't move Texas out of the South, otherwise it's a garbage meet.

There isn't a solution out there other than getting rid of NY and increasing the number of qualifiers out of each region and at-larges. Having 3 qualifiers out of California, NW, SW, South, SE, HL, MW, and NE and 4 at large teams with 5 individuals and an additional 4 at-large individuals would give 240 kids in each field.

The boys teams that would have qualified out of each region would have been:

California:
San Clemente, Dana Hills, Great Oak

Northwest:
CDA, Crater, Franklin

SW:
AF, Herriman, Riverton

HL:
Stevens Point, Wayzata, Dowling Catholic

MW:
Downers Grove, Plainfield North, Plainfield South

South:
Carroll, Bentonville, Austin Vandegrift

SE:
Belen Jesuit, Montgomery Bell, Vestavia Hills

NE/NY:
CBA, Westfield, Ridgefield

At-large teams would have likely been:
Niwot, Rocky, Oakdale, Orem

That covers all of the players this year, and the individual fields would have seen a step up as well, given that the 3rd place teams/at-larges took some qualifying spots. Outside of that, the solution would be to collapse everything down into 4 regions and go top 5 or 6 at each region with at-larges to 4 or 8 teams. The problem becomes where to host those meets, and also how late California has their state meet.

Don't have your athletes wear new shoes in a championship race like NXN. Why try something new on a meet like that? Saw many wearing their new dragonfly's and couldn't believe it. Look at the top boy finishers. Most wore their shoes that were already broken in to.

I get what you are trying to say, but so many boys chose the dragonfly xc's they were given because of the muddy conditions. They have a rubber bottom and the diamond spikes for better grip, that is most likely the reason why so many of them decided to wear the new spikes at NXN this year.

Currently, thousands of CO kids gladly get on a direct flight to warm and sunny Phoenix whether they have a chance to qualify or not.

Sending them to the frozen barren plains of South Dakota - via all sorts of expensive flights that require connections - is a recipe for killing Nike's moneymakers. The top kids from the top teams would still make the trek, but that's about it.

If Nike wants to still make the $$$ they'd move CO to the South regional, where direct flights to a warm location are cheap and plentiful.

The kids who wore the brand new spikes on my son's team had their best races of the season. It didn't seem to hurt to wear new spikes.

What if they move it to Nebraska. That would be more central for most teams and they could drive instead of fly.

I see flights from Denver to Souix Falls as $183 through United non-stop- 1 hour 40 minutes.

Denver to Phoenix is $178 through United non-stop, 1 hour 57 minutes.

Denver to Houston is $198 through United non-stop, 2 hours 23 minutes.

In fact, if you fly out of Colorado Springs, it's essentially the same thing... connecting flights for ~$300 for 3 hours total, except for CS to Houston- $250 for non-stop, still 2.5 hours.

I think moving it to the HL is dumb, but let's actually use real arguments here. The real argument is that it would weaken the SW and make the HL overly strong. The regions are fine, with the exception of NY existing as a region on its own.

I do believe combing NE and NY is a good idea. Then add 2 additional at larges and allow regions be awarded more than 2.

Let's look at the girls side. The SW teams were 1, 2, 3 and 4. It's unfair that the 5th and 6th teams can't be considered when their region is this strong.

I generally agree with the concept that just because a state/region is strong now doesn't mean it always will be. That's why accessibility is at least as important. However, there is a strong possibility that high population states (e.g. California, New York, Illinois, Texas) and high altitude states (e.g. all of the Rocky Mountain states) will generally be better than low population AND low altitude states in most years. And there's also the question of if any state should be it's own region by itself (e.g. New York or California or potentially Texas) or if there should always be other states added in.

For those reasons, the Southwest (mostly high altitude states) and Midwest (mostly high population states) create a situation where they (Midwest) are having to travel less than some other regions while also often being in a much deeper and more competitive (both Southwest and Midwest) region than average. One day, the Southeast for example with it's massive total population might be absurdly deep, and yet have some of the longest travel distances to get to the meet. If that can be mitigated by making regions more geographically sound while also splitting up high population states and high altitude states more evenly, it goes to creating a more stable situation going forward while increasing participation and reducing stress of simply getting to the meets.

I agree that Colorado competing in a regional meet in, say, Dallas would make more sense than sending them to Sioux Falls or Iowa City/Quad Cities or somewhere like that. Especially when you can just move big states like Illinois or Missouri over to the Heartland to increase the expected competitiveness of the region and still allow it to make sense geographically.

What does shuffling Colorado to the South and Missouri/Illinois do to the qualifying teams that simply getting rid of NY doesn't accomplish?

The same teams would have qualified, and you aren't creating brand new logistics.

By population, the regions that you are talking about shuffling around have the following total populations:

California: 39.24 million
Northwest: 17.84 million
Southwest: 21.87 million
South: 44.62 million
Heartland: 21.40 million
Midwest: 47.83 million

It's insane to make that even worse by pulling Colorado out of the Southwest and adding them to the South. The argument could be made for the Heartland, but the regions are already unbalanced. Shifting Illinois over would make sense to bring the numbers roughly to 34 and 35 million each, but I don't know that any other shifting makes any sort of sense.

Any way that you slice it outside of just making NE/NY one region, you create a region of doom.

It wouldn't make sense for CO to compete in Texas when neighboring Kansas and Nebraska compete in Heartland. Colorado doesn't border any of the states (besides a few miles of OK) in the south region. Also, the TX course is a 15 hr drive from the Denver area, whereas SD is only 9 hrs away. Mesa, AZ is about 12 hours away. Most CO schools are within an hour of Denver, so using that as a reference.

If you read my other posts this thread, you'd see that I don't think you should only move Colorado out of the Southwest or Illinois/Missouri out of the Midwest. I offered a realignment scenario that would increase the number of teams and making the regional races more accessible (closer to centers of population) while somewhat evening out the expected competitiveness of the regions by splitting up the high altitude and high population states more evenly.

For example, the "Southwest" that you are complaining would be too small: it would be California + Nevada/Arizona. The Northwest that is currently small population (though has some smaller states that have altitude and is historically competiitve) would add the very competitive state of Utah. The Midwest region that as you show has a notably higher population would be split up between the Heartland (which would be the smallest remaining region in terms of population) and a new Mid-Atlantic region which eats a little into the Southeast (which you conveniently left out but is larger than the rest in terms of population) and the Northeast (which you also conveniently left out and is comparable in population when NY is included), while also merging New York in with the New England states.

As for the "region of doom", yes - there will always be a region of doom. One can easily argue that the Southwest is currently that region of doom. I'm not sure my solution would create a worse "region of doom", but it would balance things out more evenly and make the meets more accessible (re; closer in proximity) to a larger share of runners (re: potential competitors that are paying Nike for the opportunity).

New Mexico borders Colorado and should also go to the South. Potentially Kansas as well. Nebraska would be closer to the Heartland region, though, so I don't think it would make sense.

For a more complete comparison on your reality check:...

This is the population of the regions as it stands (according to wiki's 2022 state estimates):

Southeast 88.7m

Midwest 47.4m

South 40.0m

California 39.0m

Northeast 37.4m

Southwest 21.9m

Heartland 21.4m

New York 19.7m

Northwest 17.8m

And this would be the population of the regions as I described:

Southeast 73.3m

Mid-Atlantic 62.3m

Southwest 49.6m

South 48.0m

Midwest 44.6m

Northeast 34.8m

Northwest 20.6m (though Utah, Washington, Oregon, and to an extent Montana/Idaho make this region still VERY competitive historically and recently)

As you can see above, there isn't as significant a difference in population in the 7-region format than there is with the 9-region format. So no, it DOESN'T make it "even worse".

Many of those teams just missed the cut for me. The Midwest seems to be very close and I was back and forth between Plainfield South and O’Fallon.

Im sure no one would ever go for this but hey Ill throw it out there.

1 - Combine NE/NY - adds 2 at-large bids (now 6)

2- All regions get two auto still

3- Any region that had more than two teams in the top 10 automatically get 1 of the at-larges per extra team in top 3 (excluding first two). So in this case SW boys and girls would get 4 auto qualifiers due to Niwot boys, Riverton Boys as well as Mountain Vista girls, Lone Peak girls.

4- Divide remainder of at-larges out based on same procedures as they currently use. If they believe a region such as SW in this example deserves a 5th, so be it. Goal is to get best teams to NXN.

5- additional automatics are not guaranteed for more than 1 year. If your additional qualifiers do not perform then the next year they get fewer autos.

I would wager this would be about the same results as current system but in some years like SW this year teams like Orem boys or American Fork girls would have been in conversation of a potential spot

Will they be a good team? Yes obviously, will they be a top 3 team? Very unlikely

South only beat North early in the season when those 5-7 guys were still racing F/S races, I looked at the results