The president has no bearing on this decision. I'm sure Mark Emmert couldn't give a quarter sh#t whether they race 2K or 20K. It's the rules committee made up by coaches that decides these things. And they don't read petitions, they stick with what they believe favors their recruits and training preferences. I thought you ran D1.
Make all races 8k for men, 6k for women. This results in approximately 20-25 minutes of racing for each—allowing both middle distance and distance specialists to fill out a team.
8k women would nuke middle distance runners impact—not really a huge deal for the schools who focus solely on distance, but if you want a greater number of competitive teams, increasing the distance is a bad idea.
Men should move back down to 8k. There are plenty of 1500m guys out there who can help out a little in an 8k, but become irrelevant with the increase in distance.
So because woman are weak we have to shorten the men’s race to make things “equal”. Sad
You’ve completely missed the point. It has absolutely nothing to do with capability, weakness, or equity. My view is the race distance should be set to make as many schools able to field a competitive team as possible. For most institutions, this means having a crop of distance runners and a few middle distance people to fill out the team. A “fair” race between these groups to me seems to be about 20 minutes, which translates approximately to 6k-8k. Moving women up to 10k makes the sport less competitive, not more. Moving the men down to 8k makes it more competitive, not less. Thus, 8k men, 6k women to me seems best overall for the sport.
Distance runners want the race to be 8 or even 10k. However, women's teams typically feature middle distance runners scoring more frequently in xc. This can change the dynamic and many teams allocated scholarships based on the shorter distance.
The same arguments are brought up for track when discussing adding events or changing events - be it adding a marathon or half, an indoor 10k, flat 3000, removing the 10k, adding a steeple 5k, etc.
"We request NCAA Division I, II and III Cross Country Committees and NCAA President Mark Emmert to take an important step forward for gender equity and inclusion by creating equal race distances for men and women at NCAA Cross Country Championships: 8km for all genders."
We request that in order to take an important step forward for gender equity and inclusion that men, women, non-binary or whatever else all compete in the same race as equals.
Please sign this if you really want equality. Otherwise it is a sham.
While I like the idea in theory, so many women's teams already struggle very heavily when it comes to injuries and lack of depth. Extending the race distance would even further exasperate that problem.
"We request NCAA Division I, II and III Cross Country Committees and NCAA President Mark Emmert to take an important step forward for gender equity and inclusion by creating equal race distances for men and women at NCAA Cross Country Championships: 8km for all genders."
Not sure how women are feeling less inclusive by running a 6km distance. Do you have any data to back up these claims? Or just personal feelings? I suspect the latter.
"We request NCAA Division I, II and III Cross Country Committees and NCAA President Mark Emmert to take an important step forward for gender equity and inclusion by creating equal race distances for men and women at NCAA Cross Country Championships: 8km for all genders."
Shorten the mens race, rather than increase the womens race. Bring back XC where 800m runners can make the team and contribute. The men doubling the distance to 10k from high school is unessessary.
Perhaps thinking about this more than it warrants, but I decided the petition has two big problems, to me.
1) A call for equity, in this case, should be a call to have the women match the men. But this is a call for the men to make a concession, to reduce the distance they run, to meet in the middle, to make "equity" in some way less challenging for the women. While trying to say that women are capable and should be treated as such, by asking the men to reduce the race length as an accommodation feels like admitting that the women aren't really ready to get what they are asking for.
2) The petition invites people like me to have a voice in a matter where I should have no voice. According to previous posts (which I believe), the people who have a voice in this matter have already spoken and they don't want change.
I have asked several female runners (I'm a professor and have a lot of athletes in classes) if they want to extend their championship races to 8k or longer. Their response was an immediate and resounding "NO!" Why offer me a petition to sign when their voices are the ones that matter? If you want to collect names, they should only be from the population of coaches and female athletes, not from a population that includes unrelated fifty-year-old men.
I'm all for stepping up the distance for women, because why wouldn't you? But to drop the men to 10k for some BS claim of equity is absurd. Why do these women think they deserve an opinion on what distance the men race? The men continuing to race a 10k doesn't effect them other than their feelings will be hurt if they aren't race the same distance? As someone who's raced on a national champion team I don't think I've ever heard a single person ever complain about it being a 10k. So, yes, move up the women, but don't drop the men.
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