Probably because Manhattan is the same weekend as Clovis and I doubt any decent California team would skip that for anything out of state.
Kind of unfortunate if you’re a NY fan that Great Oak won when they really haven’t been very good within California since Soles left. It felt kind of ok when Dana Hills won a while back because they seemed like a good team with a legit shot at NXN, but this looks pretty bad for all the upstate teams.
As a side note though, if given the choice between the two I’d take McQuaid over Manhattan 100% of the time. I’m in the camp of people that really dislikes that it’s a 4K course. Even if Manhattan used the 5k course though, I’ve got upstate bias so running cross country anywhere in NYC feels weird to me.