What changes should be made to NXN and NXR to make it even better

Paul,

Exactly what I wanted to say. Doug, you should be lobbying CA and your section to allow modified athletes in your district to compete up.

I'm putting you out there: if CA said you could use modified runners, would you use them and why?

I agree with this, and IMHO that's the way it is now, because FLN remains the primary individual event, with regional teams, and NxN remains the only school team event, with some individuals tossed in to try and make it something it's not - because NxN is NOT an individual event. I personally agree with you and like having the two different options.

Sure, the individual is who wins the FLN, unless you're saying a team can't be national champion unless they also win the FLN team competition? People don't think of this, but FLN has always had a team competition. And I think they don't care that NxN has a school competition. I certainly don't, and kind of wish it would go away, because I'd rather see the best individuals competing. However I do like the NxN race, and feel the venue is better than Balboa Park, which is too small and constricted for a cross country course.

That would be okay if the teens were not forced into running certain races, which currently they are.

NXN is and will be the primary high school cross country event. Individually, NXN and FL, are equal if not a slight trend towards NXN.

When I', watching the state meet or the NCAA meet, I've always been interested in the top individuals AND top teams. Why should the pseudo HS national championships not involve teams as well?

Back before people started throwing up on themselves in here, there was some interesting discussion here about the strength and weakness of each region, and how that might best be measured. Somebody mentioned that just looking at the number of wins, or number of podium finishes, etc for a given region isn't a valid metric, because it can be so skewed by one good program. I agree with that. Also, with so (relatively) few years of data from NXN, a one-off team like Coatesville (PA) would have a disparate impact on the "strength" of a region.

So, how best to define competitive balance? If we had 9 perfectly balanced regions from a "competitive" perspective, the 4 at-large teams would take the last 4 places in the team race every year (assuming a fair race, no falls, injuries, teams phoning it in, blah blah blah). Not surprisingly, this has never happened. In the absence of this perfection,, if the ideal goal is to get the best 22 teams in the country into the race, we could at least feel that the meet had possibly achieved that were an at-large team to finish last (assuming that the selection committee had chosen wisely, of course). In the "qualifying" era (2007 forward), this has happened four times.

Turning this analysis around... maybe the best measure of relative strength / weakness of a region is as follows: how many times have one of their auto-qualifying teams finished behind the worst at-large team? This is an indication that there was probably a better team (the 5th at-large team) sitting at home. I tabulated this for the years 2007 - 2018, and here are the totals:

South: 20 (41.7%)

SouthEast: 19(39.6%)

NorthEast: 18 (37.5%)

Heartland: 12 (25%)

NorthWest: 10 (20.8%)

Midwest: 9 (18.7%)

California: 5 (10.4%)

SouthWest: 3 (6.3%)

New York: 3 (6.3%)

I included all auto-qualifiers in these counts, even if there was an at-large team from their region that ended up beating them at NXN.

Clearly, the South, SouthEast, and Northeast could use some help from a competitive balance perspective. How to best achieve this without creating unmanageable distances to Regionals is beyond me.

Tough to do without somehow splitting California (impossible) and NY.

another coach wrote:

NXN is and will be the primary high school cross country event. Individually, NXN and FL, are equal if not a slight trend towards NXN. When I', watching the state meet or the NCAA meet, I've always been interested in the top individuals AND top teams. Why should the pseudo HS national championships not involve teams as well?

NxN is the primary high school meet for COACHES -- not for the runners.

I agree with your last sentence though. NxN should have teams, but teams of individuals from regions, not teams from individual schools. Leave coaches completely out of it and the meet will be better.

>>This is the rule. It applies to every team equally:

IN ORDER COMPETE IN NIKE CROSS NATIONALS OR NIKE CROSS REGIONALS YOU MUST BE IN GOOD STANDING WITH THE NCAA, ON TRACK TO GRADUATE PER YOUR HIGH SCHOOL’S GUIDELINES AND HAVE NOT BEEN DISMISSED FROM YOUR CLUB FOR DISCIPLINARY REASONS. ADDITIONALLY, YOU MUST BE AT A GRADE LEVEL THAT ALLOWS YOU TO PARTICIPATE IN HIGH SCHOOL CROSS COUNTRY BASED ON YOUR INDIVIDUAL STATE ASSOCIATION RULES AND GUIDELINES

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This rule is the problem. It a rule that states not everyone is playing by the same rules. It unnecessarily creates an uneven playing field, which is just silly for a "national championship". This would allow an awesome runner to compete for 6 years at NXN in some states? I would assume this was done because NXN didn't want to have to write an entire set of eligibility rules just for the event. Too much work. But they really need to bite the bullet and do so. They need to set the rules for a variety of things that have been discussed here, including middle schoolers, transfers, coaching availability, etc. Everything that differs by state or other reasons needs to addressed in their rules and set for all teams. No exceptions.

A national championship must be based on national rules for that championship, not state specific rules.

This seems self evident to me. I can not understand why someone would argue against it.

Because the idea of NXN is to create a national team championship between high school teams AS THEY EXIST for the entire season. If the rule was that the teams had to be all 9-12, then that would not be a race between the New York teams as they competed that season and the California teams as they competed that season. I realize that because of the various state associate rules these things are always going to be imperfect, but this is the best way to have a competition between school teams as they actually exist. If Doug Soles can't compete without using middle school students then he should by lobbying his state association to allow schools in his state to use middle school students, not complaining about the NY system. Or he can take his ball and go home and prevent his athletes from having meaningful competition opportunities.

One set of rules wrote:

A national championship must be based on national rules for that championship, not state specific rules.

This seems self evident to me. I can not understand why someone would argue against it.

The event is a club event, not a high school event. The event sponsor sets the eligibility requirements. It would seem a tough sell to me to have to say to someone on your club's team that they can't run in this event even they were on the same team all year as the rest of the club. BTW CA also gets a break as they don't have to run in a separate regional competition as do the rest of the field (if they also want to compete for state championship), no?

>> If the rule was that the teams had to be all 9-12, then that would not be a race between the New York teams as they competed that season and the California teams as they competed that season.

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I don't see an issue with a runner being able to compete in-state under states rules, but perhaps being ineligible for a national race under national rules. That happens in other cases in other sports.

I also don't see an issue with California teams adding middle schoolers for a national race if it is allowed under national rules. I just think every team should use the same rules.

I also don't have an issue with a transfer being able to compete in-state under states rules, but perhaps being ineligible for a national race under national rules, if that is the way the national rules are written.

And so on.

This is a different race than what happened during the season because it involves multiple states. Different rules may apply to make a consistent set of rules.

Sure, if your point is that Nike, as sponsor of a glorified exhibition post season meet, can make and enforce whatever rules they want to, you are correct. For that matter, if Nike wanted to get ride of the rule that clubs all had to be from the same high school, they could do that. Then teams could be formed of regional superstuds and it would be like AAU basketball. I just saying you should look at it from the point of view of what Nike's vision for the meet is and was and how it has been sold and promoted. It is the national high school team championship meet. Because there are 50 different state federations it would be impossible for there to be a perfectly consistent set of rules. (And trust me, the power-hungry pricks that run those associations are never going to agree to give up part of their fiefdoms). There is a reason that Nike chose to make it so Kroy=York, etc. The whole idea is to take the best teams as they competed during the season, the west teams as they competed at Mt. Sac invitational and the Northeast teams as they ran at Van Courtlant and the Southern teams as they competed at Great American Cross Country Festival and put them all on the course and let them settle any debate on the course. So, yeah, Nike could say it was just for grades 9-12, or was open to everybody grade 7 and up. But if they did that then the teams that competed at Regionals and the ones that were available to be selected at large would be significantly different from the teams as they competed that year. That may or may not be a win for fairness, but it is a win for fairness at the expense of the vision of the meet that Nike has promoted. It is not really clear to me that it is a win for fairness, as I do not understand how a committee would evaluate, for example, a third place New York regional team that would not be able to use one of their top 7, or how it would evaluate teams from California that claimed they had 3 stud 8th graders who nobody has seen run. There are of course administrability concerns with Nike choosing some other eligibility standard. I'm not denying it could be done, but it would have some expense and I wouldn't have a lot of confidence that they could do it well. I just have yet to hear a good reason that this would make the actual meet better unless your definition of better is "it would give a better chance to California schools to win." Frankly I think it Great Oak won over some diminished NY teams that were without some of their best runners (as their teams had been composed all year) it would be a hollow victory that nobody would truly regard that as deciding who the best team that year was. I for one would have far less interest in such a meet.

In order to have a championship between entities in any sport at any level, the fairest way to do it is to have each entity abide by the same set of rules and restrictions. Again, this seems so self evident to me I am surprised I have to keep restating it.

The more each entity has different rules and restrictions, the less fair a single championship becomes. This also seems self evident to me.

I don't think Nike markets NXN to be as teams ran in their own states. As you state yourself, the more probable reason is Nike lets each state bring their own rules because Nike didn't want to fight 50 states for a common set of rules. I personally believe if somehow all 50 states agreed on a common set of rules, Nike would be delighted, not fight against it.

I am not sure why you keep bringing up California and Great Oak. I think I have made it abudently clear I just believe in one set of rules. If they chose to run NXN so every team runs under New York rules, that is a fine solution to me. I do think there are a lot of Cali people who think to compete in a high school event (as you state, this is high school team championship), then it should be 9-12 grade high school runners only. I agree with that, but that is a distant second to having one set of rules in my view. I'll repeat one more time, I don't care what the rules are as much as just having one set of rules.

I don't attach any cosmic significance to NXN, I am not directly involved in high school running, so it wouldn't bother me at all if they kept it the way it is. I mainly pay attention to the boys individual race, and there isn't any real rules problem there. But I still feel the fairest race is one set of rules for all.

Get rid of both races. High school kids run too many races as it is.

Moving right along wrote:

How to best achieve this without creating unmanageable distances to Regionals is beyond me.

I think that they can't really be balanced without creating regionals too geographically spread out as long as NXN is having to compete with FLN for the athletes. Hypothetically, long term, I think the solution requires a world where no single state has it's own region (yes, even California), which would mean the schedule would have to be pushed back a week to accommodate the California State meet. The best way to find balance is to focus first and foremost on accessibility/location of the NXR regional meets, and make only slight adjustments for balance when distances are similar enough. I feel like a 7-region layout would probably be pretty balanced if you continued maintained a 20-25 team field: at that point, the regional cap can probably safely be raised to a max of 5 per region since there would be fewer regions and more teams representing each region (whether it is 3 AQ teams + 4 national At-Large with a regional cap of 5 for a field of 25 teams, or 2 AQ teams + 6 national At-Large with a regional cap of either 4 or 5 for a field of 20 teams, or somewhere in between).

Hypothetical regions where travel distance is paramount:

Southwest: Massive change as the previous Southwest gets broken up and California gets added. New "Southwest" would be California, Nevada, Arizona and Hawai'i. Only 4 states included (though California is massive), with the lat/long center of population being 35.267, -118.114. Closest reasonable sized cities to host: Bakersfield CA or Lancaster CA. Mesa is roughly the population center of the furthest state, and that's only about 470 miles from the regional center of population.

Northwest: Same as is, except add in Utah and take out Hawai'i. 7 states included, with the lat/long center of population being 45.074, -118.479 (closest reasonable sized cities to host: Boise ID or Tri-Cities WA). Boise ID makes the most sense as the regional location, because although the Tri-Cities are slightly closer to the center of population, it is a more balanced drive from the different state centers of population (not counting ID/WY/AK, it is between 385-465 miles for the rest of the four states). Might as well keep the course at Eagle Island.

Midwest: This is basically the Heartland region, but adding in Illinois along with Indiana and Missouri while taking out Kansas. 9 states included, with the lat/long center of population being 41.714, -90.418 (around Davenport IA or Iowa City IA). The Dakota schools have a ways to travel (SD center of population being a little over 500 miles away and ND a even further), but the rest of the centers of population within the region are within 400 miles.

South: Add in Colorado, New Mexico and Kansas but take out Mississippi. 7 states included, with the lat/long center of population being 33.102, -97.649 (on the NW outskirts of Fort Worth TX). No matter where the regional is located, Colorado is going to have to fly in. New Mexico also has a long trip at just over 600 miles from the NM center of population. Kansas is a more manageable 425 miles as the next furthest.

Southeast: Add in Mississippi but take out Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland (+DC) and Delaware. 8 states included, with the lat/long center of population being 32.556, -83.170 (nearest reasonable city to host: Atlanta GA). Aside from Florida, all the state centers of population are within about 360 miles of Atlanta.

Mid-Atlantic: Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland (+DC), Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 8 states included, with the lat/long center of population being 40.302, -79.125 (a bit east of Pittsburgh PA). This would be a very compact region, with every state center of population being within 400 miles of the regional center, and aside from Michigan every state being within 300 miles.

Northeast: Basically the current NE region plus NY but without New Jersey and Pennsylvania. 7 states included, with the lat/long center of population being 41.880, -73.358 (between Albany NY, Hartford CT and Newburgh NY). This would essentially be no change to travel distance, it would make sense to keep the course at Bowdoin.

The only real exception to where a state would be traveling to a more distant regional would be New Jersey, which is only about 150 miles from the Northeast meet but about 300 miles from the Mid-Atlantic meet. That would be pretty essential in terms of balancing the strength of the regions, though.

Michigan is also essentially halfway between the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions, but if you kept Michigan in the Midwest and moved the Mid-Atlantic meet further east (e.g. the Baltimore area), it would also unbalance the regions (assuming Michigan began sending more teams).

I'll see about making a follow-up post to look at how that would have effected teams (assuming that everyone that the order at NXN would have been the order at NXR, which is extremely unlikely ... but I'm not going to go through the process of merging all the NXR meets together every year to identify all the probable qualifiers and in what order) either today or this weekend - identifying who might have been left out, and maybe who might have been added in, over the last decade or so.

Also, for those more visually inclined, here's a map of what it would look like:

https://postimg.cc/dZm1gsH1

black dots = the center of population for each state, the blue circles being the rough location of the meet (based on regional center of population).

People have mentioned NY having their own region doesn't have to do with how good they are. Do you have any evidence for this? I'm all for combining NY with other regions. It won't really change the results. 2 NY teams will go every year and at least half of the individuals will be from NY. Below I've merged some recent team results based on average time and looked at the time run by the 10th place finisher. Obviously this isn't the best metric and can be skewed but someone else more inclined (@meylan perhaps?) could merge the results of the past couple of years and analyze.

2018 Men NY 10th Place: 16:18, 182 SR, NE 10th Place: 16:19, 182 SR

Fayetteville-Manlius NY

Christian Brothers Academy NJ

Burnt Hills NY

Bishop Hendricken

Haddonfield Memorial NJ

La Salle Academy

Liverpool NY

Corning NY

2018 Women NY 10th Place: 18:34, 139 SR, NE 10th Place: 19:07, 127 SR

Saratoga Springs NY

Fayetteville-Manlius NY

Liverpool NY

Hunterdon NJ

North Rockland NY

Champlain Valley Union VT

North Allegheny PA

West Chester Henderson

2017 Men NY 10th Place: 16:36, 176 SR, NE 10th Place: 16:35, 177 SR

Fayetteville-Manlius NY

Christian Brothers Acad NJ

Xavier CT (.3 sec difference from Corning, beat CBA in team scores)

Corning NY

Burnt Hills NY

Bishop Hendricken RI

Kingsway NJ

Northport NY

2017 Women NY 10th Place: 19:01, 130 SR, NE 10th Place: 19:07, 127 SR

Fayetteville-Manlius NY

Liverpool NY

Saratoga NY (Beat Shen in team score with lower avg time)

Shenendehowa NY

Hunterdon NJ

Kingsway NJ

Fox Chapel Area PA

Wellesley MA

Shall I continue? Although the men appear to perform comparably (to the entire rest of NE, mind you), the women aren't even close despite 2017 being an obvious anomaly.

As a reminder, this is by AVERAGE TIME and should not be considered as totally accurate. It's entirely possible these rankings change dramatically if you merge the results. But I'm certainly seeing a trend. Aren't you? Nike, above all else, wants high PARTICIPATION because this is what ultimately makes them money. No teams from the NorthEast are going to drive to Bowdoin just to get smacked by NY teams, particularly on the girls side. This is why NY (and California) have their own region. They're a cut above the rest. Maybe it's due to population. Maybe we just care more. Maybe we have bigger schools. I don't have all the answers, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see NY (and CA) are just better. If you merge them into regions with other states, participation from those other states will inevitably drop.

That hurts Nike's bottom line. That's bad for Nike. It's never going to happen so long as NY and CA continue to be as consistently good as they are. Another poster mentioned another metric, losing to the worst at large team, of which CA and NY as individual states did better than every other region save one. Nike probably had analysts look at results in much more depth than I just did to arrive at the same conclusion.

Coach Soles wrote:

..... Many hold the same view that I do, but obviously not a lot of them are willing to share it because of the blowback. This thread posed the question what makes NXN better. I have stated my case and believe it to be correct. The obvious answer for me is to go in the future or not, something I have been discussing. I no longer take my teams to NBNO because of the same rules issue. I believe 9-12 makes NXN a better event for all teams and I believe the historical results show that. That is my position, and it won't change.

This will be my last post on this thread.

Doug

Coming into this discussion late but just have to say totally support the above position and you are 100% correct, and hope you dont back down, on both the NXN and the NBNO fronts, this issue needs a champion. Rule should be simple 9-12. Yes blow back is a problem because the fight could be interpreted as sour grapes, and in some cases it is but they are legitimate sour grapes and it doesn't change the core of the issue.

I could cite several grievances but suffice to say the rule is neither fair nor in the athletes in question best interest.

Had they allowed all states to use 7th and 8th graders it would have immensely helped our team a few years back when our team was peaking, however, I don't doubt that although the 7th and 8th graders in question would have had fun, they would have been more exploited by the team and the older girls than "real team" members, plus at the same time taking away spots from girls that had run together for years. The real solution is a hard 9-12 cap, which is consistent with the majority of the country.

How many girls from the New England states are competing at NXR? That's the real question, since combining NY+NE but putting NJ/PA in a different region means that the NJ/PA teams wouldn't be scared off by going up against the big bad Empire State, and as you mention the boys side isn't really that different.

Redrawing the regions to put NY and CA into other regions isn't to "punish" those two states for being so good, it's to create a better balance between the regions (strengthening the NE in NY's case, and potentially NW and SO by creating the opportunity to break up the already strong Southwest).

It doesn't matter though, because certainly nothing is going to happen as long as Nike is having to compete with Footlocker for athletes (there is surely a reason that FLS and FLNE are awfully close to the NXR-SE and NXR-NE/NY courses), and even after that there is no guarantee they would want to change things to create better balance between the regions.

Well here is something to consider. The current format is something nearly everyone currently agrees on and more and more you are seeing top kids/programs choosing to run NXR. If you start changing things to the current set up, you risk losing out on some of those programs who may no longer be interested like the NY groups and Nike doesn't want that. Also, Doug would never actually take the chance for his kids to compete at Nike away from them so for all the talk of doing FL, I doubt he is going to tell his varsity squad, sorry we aren't going this year. If you start telling NY teams they can't use 8th graders, I think the chance is MUCH higher they pass on Nike since they have to run a qualifier meet, unlike CA who doesn't have to run a qualifier after their state meet.