No more D1 Track regionals?

Runningart2004 wrote:

Did you know? They used to run heats in the 10,000 in the Olympics. I think this was last done in '92. College runners need to get used to running heats. An Olympian running the 5k and 10k already races 3 times in 9 days. In the past distance runners would double back the same day, the next day, etc. Train for the scenerio you are going to be faced with....instead of complaining about it. They are trying to cut back on the number of guys running a race at regionals that they have no intention of racing at nationals. How many guys do you think are going to double? Not many.

Alan

Saying college 10k runners need to get used to running heats is like saying middle schoolers should do 100 mile weeks now to get ready for serious training in their later days. running more and more totally unneccessary races, especially if it is 5 or 10k, is harmful and pointless. if and when runners get to the olympics they can mimic that stress in their training leading up to the meet. they do not need to be damaging their chances by racing extra heats 4 years before the fact.

perspective wrote:

Head to head competition is best. That's why the regional system was created. Put the guys on the track together and have them race man to man. Competition is the essence of sport, not descending order lists, which are greatly influenced by weather factors. At regionals, everyone competes under the same conditions. Let the best man (or woman) win.

I agree, but with BOUNDARIES!!!!! If head to head is all there is to it, then why doesn't the 15:00 5k guy even get a shot at the top 64, or USAs, or Olympic Trials? After all, he could bust a nut and run 13:20 if only he was head to head with the right guys, right? WRONG!!!!

Head to head competition is the best - I totally agree, WITH THE APPROPRIATE FIELD. 64 is simply too many - the guys that belong in the race (top 10 college runners) will have no problem posting top 24 times over the course of the whole year - it won't be a time-trial conquest for the important parties involved.

And, if that means that all the 14:10-14:30 guys ARE chasing times all year - is that so bad!!!! I agree that NCAAs should prepare our athletes for what's to come next - but nothing will come next if all you're doing is running tactical races at 14:15-14:25!!!!! Oh, and guess what happens when you are good enough to run after NCAAs and you go to Europe? You train and run in races all summer that go out fast and you get pulled to great times, then you recover and get prepared for the tactical and slower championship races (Worlds, olympics, USAs, etc.) - sound like something familiar?

ONLY TOP 24 GET INVITED- SPREAD THE GOOD WORD!!!!!

So much for development...another essence of our sport. The top 24 do not make our sport what it is, and don't give me, "exactly, that's what's wrong with our sport". Our sport is as grass roots as it gets. We are not in the "primary" business of preparing our young talent into Olympians. If we were we most of us would be failures. Those kids come around every now and then. We are talking about 3,000 to 4,000 athletes here. Stop with the "this will hurt our elite athletes". Let's sacrifice the mass majority of what this meet is supposed to be about for the few that will have a chance to make an Olympic team. If it is that important to the athlete and the coach...redshirt! This is college track and field and our bosses could give a sh&t about how many Olympians we are developing (as evidenced by the banishment of said Olympians from our college track facilities). We have to pick a primary master and serve that one and work with the other. You can't have it both ways, at least not with a head-to-head system.

morning runner wrote: i don't understand the rational

NCAA MASTER -

Do you know what the gap is from the 24th. to the 50th. best times are? At 100 meters it's .1 of a second. At the 1500 it's 1.6 seconds. At 400 meters it's .48 seconds.

In other words, there is less than one percent difference between the 24th. and 50th. marks. The impact that weather has on performance often exceeds one percent.

Is 10.42 for 100 meters in eighty degree temperatures superior to a 10.49 in fifty degree temperature - or is it just the better weather that is the differentiating factor?

This may make me look ignorant (I didn't read through all the posts), but the whole thing looks kind of cool to me. From what I looked at it doesn't look like it will be any harder to double than it used to be. The most common double is the 5000/10000, and it is usually only attempted by the super elite of the NCAA. I'm sure these guys will be able to get the 3 races of regionals without wearing themselves out all that much. Besides, if the schedule is smart it will have heat 1 of the 5000 the first day, the 10000 the day after, and then the 2nd heat of the 5000 the 4th day so that the guys get a day of rest. At nationals they only have two races, instead of the current three.

Like I say, I only read the fist two pages, so I'm probably missing a bunch of stuff, but it doesn't look like too bad of a system to me right now.

i was under the impression that the 5k only had 1 heat, like the 10. its the steeple that has 2 "regional" heats and 1 final

still don't understand why the sky is blue

Very important points were made in the posts by 'perspective' and 'just coaching'.

1. The difference between the 25th mark and the 50th mark on the descending order lists is usually very small.

2. Development is one of the major roles of collegiate T&F. Sometimes, we're coaching to develop athletes who can make it to nationals, but the vast majority are not on that level, at least yet.

So, regionals are useful because they create a stepping stone goal that is attainable (or at least seems possibly attainable) for quite a few runners. Sophomore year, aim to qualify for regionals. Junior year, aim to do well at regionals. Senior year, aim to make the final at nationals.

Does this sound like a waste of time to the 'just take the top 24' crowd? If so, why? What is lost by having the round of 64 the week before? Do you seriously think that having to compete the weekend before is going to have big effect on the outcome of the round of 16? If so, have you noticed that cross nationals are only 9 days after regionals? That seems to work quite well. In track also, the very top athletes will be able to conserve effort during the round of 64 and still advance.

sc42 wrote:

1. The difference between the 25th mark and the 50th mark on the descending order lists is usually very small.

Just a question, but how do they break the inevitable ties in the 64th spot. For the 100 there could be three or four ties. For the high jump it could be ten guys in a tie.

So what your saying is? wrote:

Wait a minute! So a 10k runner has to run two in the 11 day period? And perhaps get there by winning conference? And probably run one or two more chasing the mark in case they don't win conference. Nice planning to kill the 10k runner if that's how it works...

As of now there is no regional 10k because that would be ridiculous to run 3 10ks in a row. I'm guessing (I hope) that would not change. You qualify for nationals solely on time. If it is how you say it though then there will most likely be casualties on the track.

Even still though, this seems like a cool idea for the sprints and maybe jumps and throws but that seems like too much for distance runners. But when was the last time NCAA's cared about distance runners in track. Why do you think regionals/nationals is always in a hot place like cali, texas, arizona, iowa, florida? So the poor little sprinters don't pull a muscle in mild weather. Boo Hoo.

NCAA Athlete:

Generally speaking, cross country & track athletes are the best students within the NCAA spectrum. Your post is not consistent with that intellectual ability. The reason the NCAA meet is given to certain site is first of all they submit a bid. Some years we may only have one bid. I guarantee you, if a northern site, with good facilities, and a good meet management plan submitted a bid, they would be given the meet. In two years the meet is going to Oregon. Is that too southern for you? Indiana hosted the NCAA met several years ago. It has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with sprinters, and has everything to do with who can run the meet in the manner it should be run. Regionals is the same way. Bids are submitted by interested hosts, and they are judged on how well they can do the meet. Unfortunately, what happens is many small schools either don't have the budget to run the meet, or don't have the necessary facility to run the meet, therefore they can't get it.

As one who actually votes on where the sites are given your post has no merit.

Lets not turn this distance oriented site into a distance versus all the other events argument. We are ALL track & field oriented, so lets work together.

perspective wrote:

Do you know what the gap is from the 24th. to the 50th. best times are? At 100 meters it's .1 of a second. At the 1500 it's 1.6 seconds. At 400 meters it's .48 seconds.

so can we all agree then that whether the field is 24 or 32 or 64 you are still going to have athletes and coaches "chasing times" and this notion that having a field of 64 is going to reinvigorate racing and duel meets is silly?

reasonable points, but you have to draw boundaries. nearly every track team already has a conference meet. many schools on the east coast also have (or had) the IC4A/ECAC meet. there are a number of tangible goals on the way to making nationals.

further, your argument doesn't have a logical end. why not have 128 person fields? 500 person fields? why not make the entire season the ncaa championships? round 1 the first weekend of april and more rounds all the way up until the culmination the first week of june. then only good racers would make the NCAA finals.

as others have pointed out, part of development is teaching athletes to run fast times and providing them with the opportunity to do so. you keep adding rounds to NCAAs in addition to existing conference meets and USATF champs and an athlete's entire peak is going to be trials and finals at those meets. when do the athletes have a chance to just race as fast as they can in ideal conditions? you need those fast times to get into meets in europe and to get sponsorships.

i think that drawing the line around 32 athletes makes much more sense. you can eliminate one round in events below the steeplechase and you can reasonably have 2 rounds in the steeple, 5k and 10k. it wouldn't be absurd to have only one round of the 10k with a field that size, although it would probably be too much. that said, if top 16 move on, it wouldn't be as taxing as it might be with a larger field.

i guess the question with a field of 32 would be how long the meet would be. would you bother to stretch it over two weekends. i guess you'd have to, but at least you could limit the numbers of weekdays in the first portion of the meet. for example, friday-saturday followed by wednesday-saturday. you'd still have the issue though of athletes and coaches (or the NCAA) having to pay for lodging between sunday and tuesday in a somewhat wasteful way.

If you go to Trackshark sidebar there is a link that explains the entire plan in great detail. The link comes from trackand fieldnews.com

http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/asset/headlines/Outdoor_T&F_Recommendation.pdf

If one were to go back in NCAA history (60's and 70's) there used to be about 48-50 qualifiers in each event at the NCAA Outdoor Championship meet, with 4 rounds in the shorter events and 2 rounds in longer events and trials and finals in field events. Cutbacks reduced fields until regionals came along and provided an opportunity to be more inclusive.

This can't be bad for the sport, as better representation from all areas of the country will be beneficial. Including Conference winners will provide more interest from athletic departments in the sport.

You're right, there has to be boundaries and limits as to how many may participate in any competition.

This proposal reduces the numbers that make it to the regional championships. Currently, 95 to 115 athletes progress to regional rounds distrubuted among four regions for the sport of track and field. The proposal only allows for 64 per event - a reduction of 33% or more. Currently, 26-28 athletes progress to the national championships per event. The proposal only allows 16 to progress - another reduction of 33%. In other words, the proposal is more selective.

But the virtues of the proposal are so strong - the inherent fairness of the qualification process and the grandeur of a national qualifying round - that they more than compensate for the loss of numbers, at least in my opinion.

I couldn't have said it better than kaitainen did a couple posts up.

kaitainen wrote:

further, your argument doesn't have a logical end. why not have 128 person fields? 500 person fields? why not make the entire season the ncaa championships? round 1 the first weekend of april and more rounds all the way up until the culmination the first week of june. then only good racers would make the NCAA finals.

as others have pointed out, part of development is teaching athletes to run fast times and providing them with the opportunity to do so. you keep adding rounds to NCAAs in addition to existing conference meets and USATF champs and an athlete's entire peak is going to be trials and finals at those meets. when do the athletes have a chance to just race as fast as they can in ideal conditions? you need those fast times to get into meets in europe and to get sponsorships.

You make some good points, but your 'limit the field' argument also has no logical end, other than taking the best mark of the year and declaring that person the national champ. Field size of one, and no messing around with people who just don't have what it takes. Just as you are not advocating a field of one, no one else is advocating a field of 500, so you're knocking down a straw man.

As for providing the opportunities for athletes to run fast, I agree with you 100% that this is important, and that's why I'd hate to see us lose meets like Mt SAC, Oregon, Stanford, or UW indoors. Those meets provide great opportunities to get great marks against strong fields in ideal conditions. They'll persist (which is good) regardless of the system we adopt for nationals.

It remains true that these meets generate very little interest from people who aren't there to compete. When a press release appears in the local paper saying that Joe Schmoe ran 28:54 to place 13th at MtSAC, most people reading it just think "13th, that sucks". Dual meets (and conference meets) probably remain the best way to get students at a university interested in their team. Beating the in-state rival is a thing they can relate to.

sc42 wrote:

It remains true that these meets generate very little interest from people who aren't there to compete. When a press release appears in the local paper saying that Joe Schmoe ran 28:54 to place 13th at MtSAC, most people reading it just think "13th, that sucks". Dual meets (and conference meets) probably remain the best way to get students at a university interested in their team. Beating the in-state rival is a thing they can relate to.

So, now we need to adapt our sport to what the frikken press wants to cover? What the hell are you smoking? I'd like track/xc to be covered well and for there to be a bigger awareness and all that good stuff too, but not at the expense of better competition, better opportunities, and better running! There's plenty of time in the summer to jog 16:00 5k road races and have our name published all over the front page of the local paper. I personally don't give a crap about all that; I'd rather have my friends/teammates congratulate me on my 13th place 28:54 then a full spread front page picture of me breaking the tape winning some crappy meet and having the article go on and on about how I won by 2 minutes and I'm the hometown boy.