How is the NCAA going to select the NCAA cross country qualifiers - both individual and team - without regionals in 2021?

They're just gonna pick names out of a hat.

NCAA kicks the can to leave it up to conferences or schools to decide not to participate.

A lot of teams competing now with a conference championship in late October that will expect an invitation to the NCAA championships in March.

Asking distance runners and distance coaches to choose or even attempt to compete in both concurrently.

I suppose everyone is supposed to adapt, improvise, overcome. Expecting "normal" is unrealistic.

No answers for rationale.....just trying to figure out options and make the best choices given those options.

Rojo, I'm not picking on you, but why not contact someone on one of the NCAA cross country committees before posting? The people on those selection committees just love to be important.

How about while in CA we watch NCAA, NAIA, NWAAC and NJCAA all be given their culminating competition and California community colleges end at regionals (North and South) with no state championship? The the border schools in either region (Sequoia and Bakersfield) are separated by about 80 miles. Talk about a major disparity but yet as a state we are also taking the most conservative approach to covid than any other state. Although the first NAIA cross country meet and one of any kind in the state did take place this weekend. Maybe there is hope....

I think I've heard the phrase "body of work" get thrown out as the criteria this committee would use, which would technically be anything run to date, so teams that have seasons right now have a leg up on teams that only have an opportunity to race after Jan 23rd. I don't think there's been any definitive criteria set yet, but it would seem in the spirit of fairness that given the actual start date of competition is Jan 23rd, that teams that do have a season right now should still have to run a meet after that date for the committee to use in selections. I would suspect selecting individuals would follow a similar criteria, but I don't believe anything definitive has been determined.

Then you have the tension that exists with indoor. If I had to guess - XC only happens if there is no indoor season. If you think about the current social limitations we have - it would be pretty hard to have an indoor season, but outdoor competitions would be feasible (though in many part of the country quite miserable in February).

So that's really a long way of saying - no one knows. Right now the NCAA seems to be making these decisions to have/not have a championship - not really listening to the coaches, then ultimately leaving them to figure out how to make it work.

Stop always trying to stir up conflict. They should just put together a committee of college coaches from all conferences who are competing to decide rankings. These coaches know who are the worthy teams and any team in the last 15% crying about not being chosen should go home and try harder next year.

There will be many crying because they can only have 75% of the normal amount. Pretty likely that some team who is about 20th in the country will get left out.

go gone wrote:

There will be many crying because they can only have 75% of the normal amount. Pretty likely that some team who is about 20th in the country will get left out.

Just to be clear - the number of participants at the March 15th NCAA XC Champs won't be any different than any other year - 255 participants per gender - 31 teams of 7 individuals, 38 at large individuals. Unlikely the 20th best team in the country is left at home unless they don't run AT ALL, which is a possibility.

I'd think that the folks who have votes on the national USTFCCCA poll (and I believe those are all active coaches) would have some sway over who gets selected.

What we don't know is whether or not there will be super invitationals a la Wisconsin, Pre-Nationals, Indiana State, Notre Dame, Louisville, etc., where teams can race against each other. We also don't know whether or not teams will be restricted to racing only teams in their conference and or region.

I'm sure that those conferences racing now will be upset if this winter, teams can go to these super invitationals, which leads to the question of whether or not those schools racing now can get into a meet this winter, or is there a restriction on the number of regular season meets?

Qualification will be based on age group placings at local 2020 turkey trots. All runners in college singlets will be eligible to qualify.

Gobble Gobble MFers!

Whatreallyhappened wrote:

Stop always trying to stir up conflict. They should just put together a committee of college coaches from all conferences who are competing to decide rankings. These coaches know who are the worthy teams and any team in the last 15% crying about not being chosen should go home and try harder next year.

I'm not trying to stir up conflict. I was asking a serious question. I am coaching an NCAA guy now so I was wondering how it might work as all college guys dream of making it to NCAAs. A selection process kind of kills the dream for the longshot people most likely.

Picking the teams isn't that hard to get most of them right but we need have this process be announced now and be transparent. Picking individuals is much harder. But more importantly, are they going to pick 2 teams per region and 4 individuals from each region or are they just going to pick the 31 best teams and the 38 best individuals?

Sports are scrambling to find a way to exist. The plan continues to change as reality diverges from expectations.

In the midst of all this are dumb in-the-weeds procedural questions that seem to miss just how decimated the season is already looking. You want an answer for how it's going to work? The season will be unrecognizable in every way, beyond what you're expecting. Prepare to act surprised.

I did not realize that. Everything says 75%. Can you point to documentation?

are you kidding me???? wrote:

They're just gonna pick names out of a hat.

That would be such an NCAA thing to do.

Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that whatever they end up going with will be much better.

malmo wrote:

Rojo, I'm not picking on you, but why not contact someone on one of the NCAA cross country committees before posting?

I think you overestimate the NCAA's likelihood to:

-Respond

-Actually have an idea of what the plan is themselves

Am I the only one who is partially a fan of this method? While this will force teams to be a little more race ready earlier on instead of just banking on having a big day at regionals(which I think is a fun part of the post season hype), teams in the south/south central region who have mediocre seasons and then cake walk through regionals to get ticket to nationals aren't going to have that luxury anymore. There are a couple teams who deserved to be at nationals last year over teams like Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, and Florida State, but tough region/kolas system screwed them over.

I wouldn't doubt that they follow the normal regions when picking the teams. I expect that they will want regional representation.

Sure can:

https://www.ncaa.com/news/ncaa/article/2020-09-16/ncaa-di-council-approves-moving-fall-championships-spring

Are you coaching someone who does not have a college coach? Or are you coaching someone that has a college coach and does not see eye to eye with them on their training? I think that their college coach is probably in the dark like most college coaches are about the process but their college coach would be the best person for them to gain some insight....