Georgia XC State Qualification

Which I forgot to mention, means that you get to see a number of kids from a lousy region walking at the state meet, which is a notoriously tough course.

I am a native Georgian (although not lived there in a long time). Yes GA has 7 classifications. It has also seen a tremendous population growth. It is the 8th largest state by population and has grown by almost 10% in a decade.

Perhaps they could have kept the classes at 5A, but then you likely would have had issues with regions with tons of schools where they could not even hope to play one another in the one sport that matters financially: football. (And secondarily basketball).

I suggest taking your complaint to GHSA rather than a message board to see if they would reduce the number of 7A teams that qualify to be closer in proportion to other classifications. But at the end of the day, does it really hurt you in any way. I mean it must be excruciating for you to be forced to watch those kids walk. I will keep you in my prayers.

I've lived and coached in several state, sometimes in larger school districts. On the surface it may seem as unfair representation for the larger schools. I think the argument is that since the population density is greater, the depth of quality is greater as well. It's been my experience that larger communities produce greater numbers of experienced and sport specific dedicated athletes because that's their niche. While very skilled at running, they wouldn't make the cut in other sports. Smaller communities share athletes more frequently across the board for all sports. More of these athletes tend to focus on the ball sports and less on the individual sports this dropping the quality of depth in a regular meet for sure and probably in a championship meet as well compared to larger classes.

Point being, even though the larger classes have fewer schools, they have bigger squads making it harder to be a varsity runner and qualify for championship meets. The top smaller programs are fewer and farther between and the quality drops off pretty fast from year to year. It's actually a lot harder to be a small program that competes well with the larger programs but it's been done.

Lol Illinois is bigger than Georgia and has 3 classes. Works out fine and there are crazy fast times in each class. 3A of course is the most competitive, but most winning teams could compete well in the other divisions. Works out great.